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American Cryptology during the
Cold War, 1945-1989
Book I: The Struggle for Centralization 1945-1960
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central security service
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This monograph is a product of the National Security Agency history
program. Its contents and conclusions are those of the author, based
on original research, and do not necessarily represent the official
views of the National Security Agency. Please address divergent
opinion or additional detail to the Center for Cryptologic History
(E322).
This document is not to be used as a source
for derivative classification decisions.
691
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UNITED STATES CRYPTOLOGIC HISTORY
A merican Cryptology during the
Cold War, 1945-1989
Book I: The Struggle for Centralization, 1945-1960
CENTER FOR CRYPTOLOGIC HISTORY
NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY
1995
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Series VI
The NS A Period
1952 -Present
Volume 5
A Thomas R. Johnson
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Table of Contents
Page
Foreword '. ^
Preface xiii
Acknowledgements " " xv
BOOK I: THE STRUGGLE FOR CENTRALIZATION, 1945-1960
Chapter 1: Cryptologic Triumph and Reorganization, 1941-1949
World War II and the Intelligence Revolution 1
The Way COMINT Was Organized at the End of the War . 7
The CJO V.V.V.'.V. V.V 11
The Cryptologic Allies 13
Chapter 2: AFSA and the Creation of NSA
The Stone Board 23
afsa 26
The Brownell Committee 33
Korea gg
The Country 3g
The Asia Dilemma " 38
The Invasion 4q
The Murray Mission 41
Counterattack 43
China 43
AFSA and ASA Operations 46
White Horse Mountain 4g
AFSS Introduces Tactical Warning 48
The Navy 51
The AFSA Factor 52
Relations with ROK COMSEC and COMINT 52
Korea - an Assessment 54
Chapter 3: Cryptology under New Management
Canine and the New Organization 62
The Early Work Force 63
Fielding the Field Offices 67
Civilians in the Trenches- the Civop Program 69
COMINT Reporting in Transition 69
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NSA Training - the Early Years 71
Setting Up Security /....../;,.;! 73
NSA and the U.S. Intelligence System . . /. . . ; , 75
Consumer Groups Come to NSA . . jj. . ,/./. n 75
The Struggle for Technical Control 76
The Decentralization Plan i . . . /./. . Mi. i i 78
Relations with the SCAs 80
The SCAs Create Second Echelons 83
Watching the Watchers . . /.;.../.;... u 85
NSA and CIA - the Early Years 86
CIA Enters the COMINT Business ..iu..u 89
.L.J.i '. 90
/.././. 91
CIA and Cryptogr aphic Materials ;./.../. j 92
(b) (1)
(b) (3)
OGA
94
95
96
97
98
99
CIA in the NSA /Trehches . 1 J..L 101
./ / Li 102
/. / /.J 103
NSA's Other Cornpetitors / I . J. 107
elint and NSA ; / l.j 108
Buil ding the Overt C ollection System I.. I Ill
/. ../ 112
../ 118
..i. 121
./ 121
J. 125
./ 126
/ 126
t 127
/ 127
; 131
132
The Far North
What It Was Like ; 132
] 138
SIGINT Goes Airborne 139
BLUE SKY 140
Peripheral Reconnaissance 140
The Origins of Advisory Warning 143
The RC-130 Shootdown , 144
Advisory Warning Is Implemented 147
The RB-47 Shootdown 148
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Chapters The Soviet Problem
The Early Days / . . j \ 157
The Advent of BOURBON J. .A \ 158
VENONA /..j \ 160
"Black Friday" ./. . . \ 1 '. 168
ASAandAFSATurntoRadibprinter \ 169
The Soviet Strategic Threat J.. ...I L.. 170
HowItBegan / 1 \ 171
The American Response .../ \ 174
The Soviet Atomic Bomb Project \ 176
The Chinese Threat / |.. \ 178
The Early Days of Overhead .\ .. 179
The Attack on Soviet Cipher Systems S 184
Tracking Submarines ■
] 187
188
189
Chapter S: Building the Internal Mechanism
Cryptology is Automated -The Story of Early Computerization 195
Antecedents 1 195
Postwar Developments j 197
NSA Communications in the Pre-Criticomm Era 205
The COMINT Comnet . . f 207
Securing American Communications • 211
The Era of the Wired Roior 211
The Early Years of Secure Speech 214
Organizing for COMSEC in the Postwar World 215
AFSAM-7 i 217
The Push for On-line Epcipherment 218
From SIGSALY to Modern Voice Encryption 220
TEMPEST i 221
Chapter 6: Cryptology at Mid-decade
The Early Assessments . . i 227
The Robertson Committee 227
The Hoover Commission 228
The Killian Board j 229
The Jackson Report i 231
1956 I ; 232
Suez i ; 232
Hungary J 235
] 236
Lebanon, 1958 237
1956 in History 239
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The Reorganization 239
The Move 241
Chapter 7: The Eisenhower Reforms
The Post-crisis Centralization of the SIGINT system 253
Criticomm , ' 253
The Baker Panel . . . ....].. 256
The Reuben Robertson Report 259
The marriage of elint and NSA 260
The Kirkpatrick Committee 263
NSA Centralizes the Field System ; 264
AFSS and the Development of Second-Echelon Reporting 265
The Struggle for Control in the Pacific . . . " 268
Samford Joins the Agency 269
The Tordella Era Begins 271
Public Law 86-36 272
NSA and the American Public - The Issue of Legality 272
Public Revelations and Cryptologic Secrecy 274
Classifying Cryptologic Information j... 275
Breaches in the Dike -The Security Cases 277
L* Affaire Weisband 277
The Petersen Case 279
Martin and Mitchell 280
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Foreword
(U) The Center for Cryptologic History (CCH) and its predecessors have
published thirty-seven volumes - monographs, crisis studies, source documents,
bibliographies - concerning the history of signals intelligence and information
systems security, the yin and yang of modern cryptology. These publications
have treated specific events, organizational issues, and technical
developments in peace and war; most have been pioneering efforts, based on
original documentation, and, in many cases, are the first history of their
particular topic in any venue.
(U) There has been a strong need, however, for a single work to undertake
the fuU sweep of cryptologic history, providing a context into which the more
specialized studies may be placed. Such a cryptologic Cook's tour should
incorporate the military-political events of our time and the history of
interaction between cryptologic organizations and other components of the
intelligence community - access to SIGINT and INFOSEC is limited to
"insiders," but it is clear that cryptologic operations do not occur in a vacuum.
(U) Thomas R. Johnson's American Cryptology during the Cold War, 1945-
1989 meets these requirements admirably. Drawing on over a decade of study
and reflection on cryptologic history, Dr. Johnson deals with three facets of
cryptologic history: first he explains how cryptology responded to the
landmark events and challenges of the post-World War II era. He next provides
profound analysis of how events and personalities affected the development of
cryptology institutionally and professionally. Finally, and even better, Dr.
Johnson spins a fascinating tale of the success or failure of cryptologic
operations in the various crises that have challenged the SIGINT system.
(U) With Books One and Two of this projected four-book work now
available, American Cryptology during the Cold War is "must reading" for the
cryptologic professional. The narrative and analysis in these first two books
are essential background for understanding how the cryptologic community
progressed to its present configuration. This is the definitive work on
American cryptology after World War II.
(U) For readers who may wish to explore American cryptology prior to the
modern period, I recommend as a companion piece to the present book, Dr.
Ralph E. Weber's Masked Dispatches: Cryptograms and Cryptology in
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American History, 1775-1900 (CCH, 1993). Two more useful books with
background on pre-World War and World War II cryptology are Frederick D.
Parker's Pearl Harbor Revisited: United States Navy Communications
Intelligence, 1924-1941 (CCH, 1994) and Thomas L. Burns's The Origins of the
National Security Agency, 1940-1952 (CCH, 1990).
David A. Hatch
Director,
Center for Cryptologic History
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Preface
What It Is and What It Is Not
This book is intended to be a general overview of U.S. government
cryptology since the end of World War II. It is projected to be a four-book
study carrying the story to the end of the Cold War, symbolized by the fall of
the Berlin Wall.
I have attempted to include the entire effort, which includes the Service
Cryptologic Agencies (as they were once called), as well as certain CIA
programs. These organizations comprised almost the totality of the
cryptologic efforts of the federal government, although other organizations
(FBI is a good example) have occasionally dabbled in the discipline. Because it
is comprehensive rather than strictly organizational, it contains information
about the field sites, intermediate headquarters and the SCA headquarters
themselves. It does not cover in detail the organizational aspects of the
creation of the National Security Agency. That is covered in good detail in
Thomas L. Burns's book, The Origins of the National Security Agency: 1940-
1952, published in 1990. Thus the coverage of events between 1945 and 1952
is sketchy and simply tries to fill in blanks in the record that the Burns book
did not cover.
This is not a history of private or nongovernmental cryptology. Although
it covers relationships with our Second and Third Party partners, it does not
focus on that aspect either, except as it contributed to the development of our
own effort. Our long-standing debt to the British cryptologic effort at GCHQ
should not go unnoticed, however. It deserves a separate book.
If you are looking for a history of your specific organization, you will not
find it. This is a history of events, not organizations. The importance of the
cryptologic contribution to American security is so broad as to obscure
individual organizations and, often, the specific people involved. In certain
cases, however, I have identified major individual contributors to cryptologic
history or those who were, by chance, thrown into momentous events.
Two overarching themes characterized American cryptology from the end
of World War II to the end of the first Nixon administration; centralization
and expansion. The SIGINT system underwent a period of almost unbroken
expansion from 1945 to the American retreat from Southeast Asia. These
themes dominate the first two books in the set.
The end of the Vietnam War and the era of the Watergate scandals that
followed marked a watershed, and new themes of retrenchment and
decentralization marked the period that followed. These will be the themes
that open Book III.
THOMAS R. JOHNSON
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Acknowledgements
My debt to others begins with the staff of ' the NSA Archives, who dropped whatever
the Archives helped
they were doing whenever I needed material if
with photographs, and the staff in L32 produced, hundreds of black and white prints to go
into the publication.p~T \~^ n E31 (Geographies) did most of the map work. My
iiatu uiie yuom;aHon. | / 5 m (.ueograp.
debt also includes the CIA staff historians, especiallyf
who guided my work aiid opened doojrs to CIA materia}.
My thanks al so go to the editorial staff of Barry Carleeii
and£
us history. It was the longest
and | who/ for days on end, did nothing but edit t „._..__
work that the Center for Cryptologic- History has attempted, and I am sure it taxed their
patience, although they never said so! Also owing to the unusual length and complexity of
the book, the NSA photo laboratory $23) and NSA's printing services (Y19), which did the
photo reproduction* an d printing of thif book, should be recognized for their major efforts to
get out the publication
deserves praise for the cover graphics.
In the Services Cryptologic Agencies, James Gilbert and Jack Finnegan, the INSCOM
historians, were/very responsive to my need for Army cryptologic materials. A special debt
is also owed the/historical staff at the Air Intelligence Agency. Everyone on the staff, from
James Pierson/(now retired) to Jo Ann Himes to Joyce Homs to Juan Jimenez, responded
almost instantly to my many requests for information. Their help resulted in a rather
more thorough treatment of Air Force cryptology than would have been possible
otherwise. /
The history itself has had a large number of "readers" who plowed through'the various
drafts and Revisions offering helpful comments and additional information. Everyone in
the Center for Cryptologic History (CCH) had a hand in its improvement, as well a s a list
of other r eaders who critiqued various portions. Among them, David Gaddy andl
leserve special note for their help with the chapter on Vietnam.
The history also had a group of "general readers," senior Agency officials who agreed
to read the entire work in draft state. Milton Zaslow, Cecil Phillips, Donald Parsons,
Eugene Becker, and David Boak spent long hours poring over various drafts, offering
comments and encouragement and correcting information.
Finally, I wish to thank all those who, over the years, volunteered their time to sit for
oral history interviews. NSA owes them all a debt of gratitude for their contributions to
retrieving otherwise vanished information.
THOMAS R. JOHNSON
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Footnotes
The text is footnoted throughout with short, abbreviated citations. More complete
information can be obtained in the Bibliography. However, a few comments on certain
footnote abbreviations are in order.
The largest number of citations is from the Cryptologic History Collection, which is the
working file of the Center for Cryptologic History. This collection is organized into sixteen
series, and citations to that collection begin with the series number and a series of numbers
e.g., CCH Series V.A.29.
Citations from the NSA Archives vary depending on whether the document was part of
an archived collection or was still in the Retired Records collection when researched. The
former begins with the accession number, followed by a location, e.g., ACC 16824,CBTB 26.
The latter begins with a box number, followed by a shelf location, e.g., 28791 -2, 80-079.
A general bibliography and an index are included at the end of Book II.
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Chapter 1
Cryptologic Triumph and Reorganization,
1941-1949
..-•■ •"(b) (1
The combined U.S.-U.K. COMINT operation of World War II was perhaps the most successful .... ^ 1 3
large-scale intelligence operation in history.
31A, 1971
WORLD WAR II AND THE INTELLIGENCE REVOLUTION
The Second World War began a true "revolution" in intelligence. The impact of
intelligence on the strategy and tactics of the Allies (and to a somewhat lesser extent on
the Germans and Japanese) was truly revolutionary, and it is just now coming to be
recognized for what it was. Through the publication of books like Frederick
Winterbotham's The Ultra Secret and John Masterman's The Double Cross System and by
the massive declassification of war records begun by the British and Americans in 1977,
the true extent of this influence is now emerging.
No other intelligence source had the revolutionary impact of SIGINT. World War II
was, in the words of historian Walter Laqueur, "a SIGINT war." The influence of SIGINT was
so pervasive that it is now hard to imagine how we might have fought the war without it.
Even prior to the direct engagement of American and British forces against the Germans
and Japanese, two of their most complex ciphers were broken. The British effort at
Bletchley Park first produced plaintext reports from the German ENIGMA system in
September 1940, the same month that a small Army team under William F. Friedman
broke the Japanese diplomatic cipher machine called PURPLE. By February of 1942 the
Navy had broken the Japanese Fleet Operational Code, called JN25. In 1943 the Army
broke the Water Transport Code, while in 1944 a lucky battlefield retrieval of cipher
material allowed the Army to read the Japanese Army codes. When combined with
successes in direction finding, traffic analysis, and the exploitation of plaintext
communications, SIGINT yielded a torrent of useful information.
British achievements have come in for the most scrutiny (and praise). We know that
Churchill "revelled" in his ability to read Hitler's mail and spent hours pondering on Nazi
strategy as revealed in the decrypted messages. The British set up a very efficient and
secure system for disseminating SIGINT, the precursor of our SSO (Special Security Officer)
system. Always wary of the "blabbermouth" Americans, they insisted that we adopt their
system before they would share everything in the SIGINT larder with us. As the Combined
Chiefs prepared for Overlord, they knew precisely how the Germans were reacting to the
invasion plans and where they were positioning their units for the expected blow.
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Moreover, once the invasion was launched, they knew what the Germans were doing and
were able to adjust accordingly. As Allied troops moved across France, they moved in sync
with the gold mine of intelligence which detailed most of the important German military
movements. Their intelligence officers must have looked like geniuses - they were able to
predict German moves before they happened and could advise commanders how to react. If
every dog has its day, this was the day of the G-2, the military intelligence officer. The
product of breaking high-grade ciphers was called ULTRA, and it was so good that when it
was not available, as it was not at the Battle of the Bulge, the G2 corps scarcely knew what
to do. A few predicted the German offensive, but most did not. They were wedded to the
SSO and the bonanza of information that he could provide.
The Pacific was the American theater, and the U.S. was as successful there as the
British were in Europe. Navy cryptanalysts broke JN25 in time for Admiral Nimitz to use
it in the Battle of Coral Sea in May of 1942. The success of strategic SIGINT was so
important that Nimitz had become a permanent convert. When the cryptologists at Pearl
Harbor came to Nimitz with information outlining a much bigger battle shaping up in the
central Pacific, the admiral was quick to believe and quick to act. To his dying day he
credited SIGINT with the key to the victory at Midway. This turned the war in the Pacific
completely around and launched Nimitz on his Central Pacific campaign which took him
to Okinawa. He considered SIGINT as an absolutely critical component, and he learned to
use information from both the high-grade cipher traffic and the plaintext messages and
operator chatter. Some of his subordinates were as successful as Nimitz in the use of this
intelligence, some were not. But it is hard to argue with results.
SIGINT and MacArthur had a turbulent marriage. The commander in the Southwest
Pacific had outstanding success in using SIGINT on some occasions, the most conspicuous
success coming in his 1944 New Guinea campaign. There were also some failures
resulting from several causes. His staff never came to trust SIGINT as did that of Nimitz.
When they did use it, it was sometimes hard to get it melded into the battle plan, as
MacArthur was a classical intuitive decision maker. Jurisdictional disputes between
MacArthur and the War Department in Washington caused him to come to distrust this
strange SSO lash-up which he could not control because it did not work for him.
In the battle for the sea lanes, SIGINT again played a decisive role. The Japanese
merchant marine was devastated largely because its movements were being given away in
the Water Transport Code. Sinking the defenseless and slow-moving merchant vessels
was relatively easy when their movements were known beforehand. In the Atlantic, the
U.S. and the British used decrypted ENIGMA messages to track German U-boats and to
drive their wolf packs from the sea lanes. This was not quite as easy as going after
merchantmen, and the marriage between SIGINT information and operational procedures
to effect a kill represented a very high level of military and technological expertise. It may
have been the most difficult and delicate use of SIGINT during the war.
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One other wartime accomplishment would become significant in later years. In 1944
the British and Americans established a Target Intelligence Committee (TICOM) to
interrogate captured German COMINT personnel. The major objective was COMSEC - to
determine how well the German cryptologists had exploited Allied communications. The
flip side of that effort was COMINT - to see how well the Germans were doing against other,
and particularly Soviet, communications. TICOM was at Bletchley. Park, headquarters for
the British cryptologic service, Government Code and Cipher School (GC&CS). Six teams
of American and British COMINTers were dispatched to the battlefields of the Continent.
They sent their "take" to the Document Center at GC&CS. The original documents
remained there while the microfilm copies were sent on to Washington. TICOM teams
also captured equipment. One-of-a-kind equipment remained at GC&CS, while duplicates
were sent to the United States.
The new system was so successful that teams were established in the Pacific, with the
British taking the lead in Southeast Asia, the United States in the Central Pacific and
Japan, and joint American and Australian teams in Rabaul and Borneo. Although
TICOM was formally dissolved in November of 1945, American and British experts
continued to exploit the material for years afterward, and TICOM was later re-created in
the United States as TAREX (Target Exploitation), minus British participation.
If the strength of American SIGINT was in providing militarily useful information, its
weakness was in its organization. The Army and Navy were at constant loggerheads over
the control of cryptology, and at times the factional disputes were little short of
catastrophic. British historian Ronald Lewin, a great admirer of American technical
ingenuity which yielded the SIGINT bonanza, was frankly contemptuous of our inability to
get along:
The old antagonism and suspicion between Army and Navy persisted in a manner that may at
times seem infantile, until it be remembered that tribal loyalty, narrowness of vision, and sheer
egocentricity can make even the most senior and hardened officers occasionally enter a second
childhood. 1
Army and Navy cryptologic organizations had a long and inglorious history of failing
to coordinate their efforts, dating back to the 1920s. In 1940, when the Army's success in
breaking Japanese diplomatic cipher systems became known to the Navy, there ensued
lengthy and difficult negotiations to determine how the effort was to be divided. They
finally arrived at a Solomonic solution by which the Army processed Japanese diplomatic
traffic originating (i.e., cipher date) on even days of the month while the Navy would
process traffic from odd days. This resulted in a fair division politically, but from the
standpoint of cryptanalytic continuity it was a horror. To make matters even worse, there
was in those days no thought, no concept, of centralized and coordinated intelligence
analysis. What little analysis and interpretation was done (and there was very little
indeed) was accomplished by each service on the traffic which it had decrypted, leaving for
each a checkerboard pattern of information in which every other day was left out. This
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almost inconceivable situation persisted until 1942, when diplomatic traffic was, by
mutual agreement, left to the Army, while the Navy concentrated on Japanese naval
material. 2
The disaster at Pearl Harbor
resulted in a thoroughgoing Army
internal investigation. Secretary of
War Henry Stimson picked Yale
lawyer Alfred McCormack to lead the
way. McCormack discovered a
scandalously incompetent Army G2
and a nonexistent SIGINT. analysis and
dissemination system. He set up a
separate system called Special Branch,
Military Intelligence Division, and was
picked as the first deputy. (Colonel
Carter W. Clarke became the first
commander.) At the same time, the
Army and Navy arrived at a joint
modus operandi regarding the division
of overall SIGINT responsibilities. Each
service was to work what we now call
"counterpart" targets, Since there was
little in the way of Japanese Army
traffic to work, the Army took on the
task of diplomatic intercept. The third
partner was the FBI, which shared
Alfred McCormack with the Navy the task of working
Western Hemisphere agent and clandestine traffic. These three were tobe the only
participants in SIGINT for the duration of the war. Roosevelt's directive of July 1942
specifically excluded the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), Office of
Censorship, and the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) from SIGINT production . 3
At the same time a standing committee of Army, Navy, and FBI COMINT officials was
established. It met only a few times and had little lasting impact on organizational
matters. Meetings were frequently marred by vituperative arguments, especially between
Navy and FBI, which were supposed to be sharing. Western Hemisphere clandestine
traffic. It was not cryptology's finest hour. Meanwhile, the COMINT activities of the FCC
and Censorship Bureau continued virtually unabated." Only the OSS seems to have been
temporarily frozen out of the COMINT community. Resurrected after the war as the CIA, it
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exacted revenge over a period of many years for having been excluded from wartime
cryptology.
Carter Clarke, bead of Special Branch of Military Intelligence Service
The Army and Navy cryptologic organizations, Signal Security Agency (SSA) and OP-
20-G, respectively, found cooperation difficult. The Army was willing to share everything
it had with the Navy, but OP-20-G would not reciprocate. What finally brought matters to
a head was the breaking of the Japanese Army code in early 1944. This produced
information vital to the Navy in the Southwest Pacific. SSA decided to withhold
information from it until the Navy agreed to expand cooperation. The Navy quickly came
around, and the result was a wartime agreement signed by Army Chief of Staff General
George Catlett Marshall and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Earnest J. King. Called
the Marshall-King Agreement, it provided for the total exchange of COMINT materials (but
at the Washington level only). 5
It quickly fell apart, and for a time this informal agreement seemed a dead letter. But
the need to cooperate was by then so vital that the two services were driven to a more
permanent solution. Thus was formed the Army-Navy Communications Intelligence
Coordinating Committee (ANCICC) in April of 1944. The committee was to coordinate
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and settle "such controversial matters as can be resolved without reference to higher
authority," a plain attempt to keep disagreements out of the offices of Marshall and King.
Although the Navy was consistently the more parochial of the two services in GOMINT
matters, the "godfather" of this cooperation was almost certainly Joseph Wenger, a naval
commander and career cryptologist within OP-20-G. Meanwhile, coordination under the
terms of the Marshall-King Agreement continued its bumpy course, now underpinned by
this policy committee. 6
Joseph Wenger
In late 1944 the Navy (probably Wenger) once again suggested improving cooperation.
This time they proposed creating a new board called the Army-Navy Communications
Intelligence Board (ANCIB). Representation would be of a higher level - instead of the
heads of the cryptologic organizations, the members were to be the heads of intelligence
and communications for the two services. The board would be formally established
(ANCICC was informal) and would be approved by Marshall and King. Although the
Army initially answered "No," it later changed its mind, and ANCIB became official in
March 1945. ANCICC became a working committee of ANCIB, insuring that the heads of
COMINT organizations would continue to meet. To keep COMINT out of the JCS arena (in
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order to tighten security), ANCIB reported directly to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, rather than through the Joint Staff.
FBI was not invited to be a member of the board, a deliberate move which was
occasioned by Navy-FBI friction over the control of clandestine intelligence. But in
December 1945, the State Department was invited, and ANCIB became STANCIB. This
recognized the existence of a small COMINT exploitation unit at State and implicitly
acknowledged that State would have to be invited if ANCIB were to represent the United
States in postwar COMINT negotiations with the British. In 1946 the board changed name
once again, to USCIB (the United States Communications Intelligence Board), a lineal
predecessor of today's National Foreign Intelligence Board. At virtually the same time,
the newly created Central Intelligence Group, soon to change its name to CIA, accepted an
invitation to join. Through all this, ANCICC changed to STANCICC and then to
USCICC. 7
No matter what the name of the board, cooperation remained purely voluntary, and all
decisions required unanimity. There was no higher authority imposing central control of
COMINT. The British, who had a unified COMINT service under the Government Code and
Cipher School (GCCS), were scandalized. During the war they were forced to deal
separately with the three organizations with COMINT interests - the Army, Navy, and FBI.
British officials regarded negotiations with the Americans as a little like dealing with the
former colonies after the American Revolution - disorganized and frustrating at times, but
they could still play one off against another to achieve their objectives.
THE WAY COMINT WAS ORGANIZED AT THE END OF THE WAR
The cryptologic system that emerged from World War II was profoundly and
tenaciously decentralized. Instead of a central control (like NSA) and Service Cryptologic
Elements (SCEs) as we know them, there were only the separate COMINT organizations of
the Army, Navy, and FBI. Naval COMINT was under an organization called the
Supplemental Radio Branch and designated OP-20-G, part of Naval Communications.
There was a headquarters in Washington called CSAW (Communications Supplementary
Activity, Washington) where centralized processing functions were performed, chiefly
against the German naval ENIGMA problem. For the Pacific theater there were virtually
independent processing centers: one in Hawaii, called FRUPAC (Fleet Radio Unit,
Pacific); one at Melbourne, Australia, called FRUMEL (Fleet Radio Unit, Melbourne) and,
late in the war, one on Guam, designated RAGFOR (Radio Analysis Group, Forward).
Naval COMINT had grown through the years. From its beginnings in 1924 with one
officer, Laurance Safford, and a single civilian, Agnes Driscoll, OP-20-G had by 1941
increased to 730 bodies. During the war the number of intercept sites in the Pacific
increased from four to eight, and the receivers allocated to Japanese intercept increased
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from 68 to 775. Shipborne collection began with one operator and one receiver in the
Pacific in 1941, but by 1945 there were eight shipborne operator teams with 120 receivers.
Yet in 1945 the entire system quickly collapsed. OP-20-G closed ten of its sixteen intercept
and DF stations. When the war ended, the German cipher exploitation section went from
over 2,000 to only 200.
Since its creation, OP-20-G headquarters had been in the Navy Building on
Constitution Avenue in Washington. COMINT success required more people and more
space to work the traffic, and the Navy began looking for a separate facility for its most
secret activity. They found it in the fall of 1942, at a girl's school on Nebraska Avenue
called the Mount Vernon Seminary for Women. The Navy bought it for about $1 million
and began converting the ivy-covered red brick structure into a military facility. One of
the first things they did was to build new barracks for the 4,000 WAVES (Women Accepted
for Volunteer Emergency Service) who were brought in primarily to operate the "bombes"
that deciphered ENIGMA messages from German submarines. 8
The Army, too, took over a girls' school. In 1942 Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) was,
like OP-20-G, looking for a new and larger home. Then it found Arlington Hall, a junior
college located in the rolling hills of suburban Arlington. The school was big on horses and
equestrian pursuits but had always been short on cash. Its founder, a Dr. Martin, went
bankrupt in 1929, and the school limped along on a hand-to-mouth existence until it was
mercifully extinguished by the Army. Paying $650,000 for the property, SIS acquired it in
June of 1942 and moved from the Munitions Building, which stood beside the Navy
Building on Constitution Avenue. 9
Organizationally, SIS was similar to OP-20-G. Although it changed its name to
Signal Security Agency (SSA) in 1943, it remained part of the Signal Corps. In September
1945 it was finally severed from Army communications, attaining status as an
independent command called Army Security Agency (ASA), an implicit recognition of its
contributions to winning the war. Elevated status gave it a two-star command billet and
an independent position in the Army hierarchy, but it now took its operational direction
from Army intelligence. This placed it back in roughly the same position that it had been
when, in the 1920s, it had been named MI-8 and had been under G2. 10
For SIS, intercept work was more difficult than for OP-20-G because the Army lacked
geographic access. During the early 1930s, SIS relied on the telegraph cable companies to
provide it with message traffic. The earliest SIS efforts to develop intercept sites resulted
in stations in Hawaii and Panama later in the decade, and by 1938 SIS had additional sites
at the Presidio in San Francisco, Fort Sam Houston in Texas, and Fort Hughes in Manila.
In 1942 SIS attempted to hear German transmissions from a new site (USM-1) at Vint Hill
Farms in northern Virginia. By the end of the war, SSA had eleven intercept stations.
The force at Arlington Hall numbered 7,848, of whom 5,661 were civilians. 11
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Government offices on the Mall
SIS and OP-20-G began World War H in these temporary buildings on the Mall in Washingti
Arlington Hall Station in the 1940s
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To Army cryptology, as to the Navy, peace was devastating/Mopi of the work force at
Arlington Hall left civilian government service, and within days -the halls were almost
empty. Intercept sites overseas were suddenly confronted with rio Japanese or German
intercept mission. One former soldier described the experience as being left stranded on
Okinawa with no Japanese mission to copy and no instructions on a/follow-on assignment.
His unit eventually moved to Seoul, relocated to a/former ..Japanese communications
station, and there got a new mission - Soviet and.Chinese Communist communications.
European units tackled French and Greek missions, and/by mid-1946 nearly half the
Army's end product was based on the intercept of French communications. 12
The late 1940s were a period of damaging retrenchment- The Army and Navy
cryptologic organizations that began the Soviet mission had little experience, less money,
and no expertise. Yet ASA was able to survive better. than OP-20-G. The Army had relied
historically on civilians, and many of the best, including William Friedman, Frank
Rowlett, Abraham Sinkov, and Solomon Kullback/ stayed/bn. Missing the excitement of
wartime cryptology, others drifted back to Arlington Hall after brief, humdrum civilian
careers. The Navy, which had relied on uniformed cryptologists, lost a far higher number
to civilian life and found the transition to peacetime a difficult one.
In 1947 ASA and OP-20-G were joined by yet a third cryptologic service, that of the
newly created Air Force. The Army Air Corps had actually established its sigint service
in the Pacific in 1944. . The Air Force acquired an early reputation for parochialism and
interservice rivalry. . The feuding led Carter Clarke, then head of Special Branch of
Military Intellige nce Service, to write ih June 1944 that "the Air Force insists that these
operate only for the Air Force and insists further that no personnel can
be attached or detached therefrom; neither should the theaters give them any operational
directives in the sense that we thin k of it." The iirst Air Force unit in the Pacific was the
which began/operations in 1944 in New Guinea. 13
When the independent Air Force was created in 1947, there was no direct reference to
cryptologic activities, and for a time ASA continued to provide these to the nascent Air
Force. Yet the Air Force was determined to establish its own capability. Certain Air Force
generals were aware of the contributions 6f COMINT during the war. One in particular,
Hoyt S. Va.ndenberg, who was later to become Air Force chief of staff, was convinced that
the Air Force had to have its own cryptologic service. He saw how the British controlled
cryptology in Europe and felt that it Was essential to get this under American, and
particularly Air Force, control. w
In early 1948 the Air Force fashioned a transition agreement with ASA. The latter
established an Air Force Se curity G roup within its headquarters at Arlington Hall to
oversee the transfer. Three I l and eight COMSEC units were turned over to the Air
Force. The Air Force role was defined as mobile and tactical, and ASA continued to
operate all fixed sites. A set number of ASA officers (thirty-two) became blue-suiters, and
this group became the "founding fathers" of Air Force cryptology. Air Force cryptologists
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were to continue to train at ASA schools and were to contribute instructors and financial
support as soon as the Air Force had a budget of its own. Significantly, the Air Force
assumed all responsibility for "the investigation for intelligence purposes of all types of
electronic emissions relating to radar, radio control of guided missiles and pilotless
aircraft, proximity fuses, electronic navigation systems, infrared equipment and related
subjects." In other words, the Air Force was to take the ELINT and electronic warfare
missions, which were at the time too new to even have a name. Needing equipment but
not yet having a budget, the Air Force arranged for the transfer of equipment from the
Army, which turned out to be cast-off receivers and antennas that ASA no longer wanted. 15
On 20 October 1948, the new Air Force cryptologic organization was officially
established as the U.S. Air Force Security Service (USAFSS), still located at Arlington
Hall. It was a major air command, responsible to neither intelligence nor. communications.
Thus from its earliest existence the Air Force accorded a loftier organizational position to
its cryptologic service than did the other, more senior, services. And the Air Force did
something else that was unprecedented. In May of 1949 it moved completely out of
Washington. Security Service set up shop at Brooks Air Force Base outside of San
Antonio, Texas. The move was calculated to remove USAFSS from geographical
proximity to the central control authority for COMINT - at the time the Coordinator for
Joint Operations, shortly to become the Armed Forces Security Agency. Thus USAFSS
hoped to be insulated from any sort of outside control, which it regarded as bald,
interference in its affairs. 16
THE CJO
The lack of central control for COMINT was the most pressing problem of the postwar
years. Cooler heads recognized that the uncoordinated and fractionalized efforts that had
existed since the 1920s simply had to be better controlled. They had already agreed on a
committee system, at that time called STANCIB and STANCICC. The committees could
and did arrive at policy decisions which, in the case of unanimity of the board, were
binding on the services. What was still lacking, though, was an executive organization to
carry out the routine business of central coordination.
In early 1946 the Navy proposed such an executive body. They called it the
Coordinator for Joint Operations, and it was to work out routine intercept coverage and
processing responsibilities between the services. The Navy got Army concurrence, and on
15 February STANCIB approved the proposal. The Coordinator for Joint Operations, or
CJO, was born. 17
The CJO was to implement general policies on allocation of joint tasks as approved by
STANCIB. It was to be assisted by three groups: the Joint Intercept Control Group
(JICG), the Joint Processing Allocation Group (JPAG) and the Joint Liaison Group (JLG).
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The CJO agreement owed its existence to the two most influential sponsors, Joseph
Wenger (who commanded OP-20-G) and Preston Corderman (chief, ASA) for the Army,
and it was in those days referred to as the "Corderman-Wenger Agreement." But when the
first CJO was appointed, it turned out to be Colonel Harold G. Hayes, a long-time Army
COMlNTer and the new chief of ASA.
The first task of the CJO was to allocate intercept tasks. This was not as easy as it
appeared. Agreement was reached that counterpart targets were to be copied by the
respective U.S. service cryptologic organization. All other targets, even those being
intercepted entirely by a single service, were to be considered "joint." The CJO then
reallocated the intercept responsibilities. This had the largest potential impact on the
resources of the Navy, which during World War II, as previously discussed, completely
gave up "joint" targets (with a few exceptions) to the Army.
Intercept allocations really got down to priorities. With limited resources (and in 1946
resources were constrained), the key to obtaining copy was in the priority system. In
September of that year USCICC decided to hold monthly meetings to consider priority
problems. By this process a standing priority list, in rather general terms, was
established. The CJO then made intercept assignments to positions in the field. When the
CJO assigned a joint case to a position it controlled (i.e., one which had been turned over by
one of the Service Cryptologic Agencies, as they were then called) there was no problem.
But occasionally the CJO assigned a joint target to a service-protected position. This
invariably met with resistance, and the CJO had no enforcement authority. The Service
Cryptologic Agencies (SCAs), for their part, insured that counterpart positions were
manned with the best operators, that they were never left uncovered, and that technical
data were always up to date. In short, if a target had to be slighted, it was likely to be the
joint target. The servicemen never forgot whom they worked for.
CJO also allocated processing tasks through the JPAG. Since people and equipment
for processing were in very short supply, processing on each major target was to be done in
only one place - either Arlington Hall or Nebraska Avenue - no matter which service
collected the traffic. In those days communications systems were mutually exclusive
rather than common and interlocking, and once traffic was intercepted by one service, it
had to pass vertically through those communications channels all the way to Washington.
This meant that there had to be communications between Nebraska Avenue and
Arlington Hall so that the traffic could be exchanged, and under CJO a teleprinter link
was set up. The services had a great deal of difficulty talking to each other (electrically,
not to mention in person), and it was a real effort to establish common cryptographic gear
for interoperability. In the late 1940s this process was just getting started.
Communications security policy was, if possible, even more difficult to meld into a
cohesive system than was COMINT. Through the war each service handled its own COMSEC
matters with little reference to joint policy. In the Army, ASA was responsible for both
COMINT and COMSEC, a development substantially influenced by such technicians as Frank
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Rowlett and William Friedman. In the Navy, COMSEC had begun within Captain Laurance
Safford's embrace, but it had eventually become part of a separate organization under
Naval Communications, called OP-20-K.
After the war, COMSEC policy was allocated by an unregistered executive order to a
Cryptographic Security Board consisting of the secretaries of state, war, and navy. This
very high-level board quickly became moribund, and the real actor in COMSEC policy was
the Joint Communications-Electronics Committee (JCEC) and its subordinate, the Joint'
Security and Cryptographic Panel. When COMINT was unified in 1949 under the Armed
Forces Security Agency (AFSA), COMSEC was still decentralized.
The C JO was a compromise between those who wanted tight central control and those
who wanted to continue a loose arrangement. It was voluntary, as had been all of its
predecessors. It never resolved the conflict over joint targets, much to the dismay of the
State Department, which was the principal customer for most of those targets. But the
establishment of an executive organization was the first step in creating an organization
to control COMINT. It didn't work, but it pointed the way toward the future.
THE CRYPTOLOGIC ALLIES
America's SIGINT relationship with Great Britain also dates to World War II. In July
1940, the British ambassador to Washington, Lord Lothian, proposed that the two nations
exchange information on, among other things, technological secrets related to "submarine
detection and radio traffic." This appears to have pertained generally to SIGINT, but the
wording of the now famous Lothian Letter did not really say precisely what he (or
Churchill) meant. It also appears that day-to-day intelligence cooperation predated the
Lothian Letter, for in April of the same year President Roosevelt met Churchill's special
envoy William Stephenson to discuss a plan for secret cooperation between the FBI and
British secret intelligence. According to a fascinating account in the somewhat unreliable
book by William Stevenson (unrelated to the wartime William Stephenson), it was at that
meeting that Stephenson informed Roosevelt of British progress in breaking the German
ENIGMA system. (This might have happened but was quite out of character for the
security-conscious British.) This meeting did, in fact, lead to the establishment of the
British Security Coordination (BSC) in Washington, with Stephenson in charge. During
its early days this organization dealt primarily in HUMINT and counterintelligence. 18
The Lothian Letter was followed in August by a visit by Sir Henry Tizard, scientific
advisor to the Royal Air Force (RAF). This inaugurated a series of technical discussions on
a wide variety of subjects. Tizard, not a SIGINTer, was mainly interested in discussing
radar and other such technical developments. At the same time, the United States sent to
Britain a delegation consisting of Brigadier General George V. Strong (Chief of War
Plans), Brigadier General Delos E mmons (United States Army Air Forces —
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USAAP), and Rear Admiral Robert Ghormley (Assistant Chief of Naval Operations).
Though the discussions were to be general, it appears that Strong had, or thought he had,
considerable latitude to discuss cryptologic intelligence. On 5 September he cabled
Washington to propose a total exchange of information on SIGINT product and technical
matters (i.e., cryptanalysis). Back in Washington there was a good bit of concern. The
Navy said "No," while the Army vacillated. Their top cryptanalyst, William F. Friedman,
was consulted. Friedman favored the exchange.
So initial hesitance was eventually converted to approval, and on the day after
Christmas 1940, the Army decided once and for all to initiate a complete cryptologic
exchange with the British. In February 1941, Captain Abraham Sinkov and Lieutenant
Leo Rosen of the Army's SIGINT organization, along with Lieutenant Robert Weeks and
Ensign Prescott Currier of the Navy, sailed to London. They brought with them a PURPLE
Analog, a machine the Army was using to break the keys for the Japanese diplomatic
cipher system. They had instructions to initiate a complete exchange of cryptanalytic and
SIGINT information. 19
The British appear to have been flabbergasted. Never had they anticipated that the
United States would simply walk in and plunk down their most secret cryptanalytic
machine. This was, indeed, an intelligence exchange worth the money. But they were
cautious. They did not tell the Army and Navy emissaries everything they were doing,
and they did not show them the ENIGMA operation at first. Agreed upon in principal in
1940, the complete exchange of cryptologic information and techniques progressed slowly
through the war. Once again the Navy, reluctant in the beginning, produced the more
beneficial exchange. This was due largely to historical circumstances. The Army was still
mobilizing and clearly would not see action in Europe until at least late 1942, if not later.
But the Navy was already engaging German U-boats in the North Atlantic. They and the
British had worked out a convoy system, and daily cooperation in intelligence was
essential to avoiding wolf packs. Thus it was that Commander Roger Winn, who headed
the Operational Intelligence Center in the Admiralty, convinced the U.S. Navy that it
must have something similar. Prompted by Winn, the U.S. Navy established the
mysterious organization called F-21 (Atlantic Section, Combat Intelligence Division, U.S.
Fleet) and its still more mysterious submarine tracking room. The latter used all sources
of intelligence, including U-boat positions obtained by ENIGMA decrypts, passed to them by
the British.
The arrangement worked well at first, but in February 1942 the Germans introduced
the four-rotor ENIGMA, and the British at Bletchley were unable to read it. The Americans
were already suspicious because the British kept the cryptanalytic techniques so closely
held. So in 1942 the Navy embarked on a project to break the ENIGMA themselves, in
defiance of British protests. Colonel John Tiltman, a temporary GC&CS resident in
Washington, finally convinced the British that the Navy would proceed with or without
British help. In June 1942, after Tiltman's intervention, the Navy sent two expert
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cryptanalysts, Lieutenant R. B. Ely and Lieutenant Junior Grade Joseph Eachus, to
Bletehley to learn all they could about ENIGMA processing. In September the Navy began a
project to build a four-rotor ENIGMA processor (called a "bombe" by the British). When in
the summer of 1943, the Navy moved to its new headquarters on Nebraska Avenue, a
major portion of the space was reserved for the bombes, which were being employedto
break the keys on German submarine ENIGMA traffic. In the end, the two nations drove the
U-boats from the North Atlantic, based in part on information provided by the bombe
project.
Meanwhile, the Army was having its own problems on the SIGINT front. Increasingly
suspicious of British reluctance to share cryptanalytic techniques, they retaliated by
refusing to share information on voice ciphony equipment with Alan Turing. Since Turing
was one of the top Bletehley scientists (and has been given credit for developing the first
British bombe), this was a very serious breakdown in cooperation. It became the subject of
a long series of exchanges between General George Marshall and Sir John Dill (chairman
of the British Joint Chiefs of Staff), and at one point it seemed possible that the two sides
might break COMINT relations. The dispute was resolved in 1943 when the British agreed
to allow a total technical exchange. The agreement was hammered out during a series of
sessions between Military Intelligence Service and Commander Sir Edward Travis, who
headed GC&CS, during Travis's trip to Washington in May. The paper specified that the
United States would be responsible for the COMINT problem in the Far East, while the
British would worry about Europe. To implement this, it was agreed that the Americans
would send a team of cryptologists to Bletehley to work side by side with the British in all
aspects of COMINT, including cryptanalysis of the ENIGMA. That way the Americans would
gain technical expertise on the system without mounting a competing cryptanalytic effort
on the American side of the Atlantic.
To begin the new relationship, the Army sent a three-man team consisting of Colonel
Alfred McCormack, William Friedman, and Lieutenant Colonel Telford Taylor to
Bletehley. By mutual agreement, Taylor was left behind in London to serve as a liaison
officer and to act as a funnel for British COMINT being sent to the War Department in
Washington. Taylor's job was not easy, as there was a good deal of second-guessing the
British forthrightness in the exchange. But as the war progressed it became smoother and
eventually became a very open exchange of highly sensitive information.
With the Axis almost defeated, the thoughts of cryptologists in 1945 turned with
increasing frequency to the Soviet Union. Both nations had maintained rudimentary
efforts against the "Communist menace" since the 1920s, and they both kept small efforts
even during the war. In June of 1945 ANCIB proposed to the British that they extend
their wartime cooperation to the intercept and exploitation of their erstwhile but
distrusted ally. They called the project BOURBON, and it was kept compartmented for the
obvious reason that the Soviets were still officially on our side. The arrangement was
largely informal and involved the exchange of liaison units on both sides of the Atlantic.
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But in September, with the war officially over,%the U.S. had a legal problem. Could it
now continue to collaborate with its British allies?^Clearly, the American cryptologists,
good as they had become, still regarded GC&CS with i certain awe. In many cryptanalytic
areas the British were still ahead of us, and their organization of the COMINT system was
superb. And of course there was the problem of the SoViet Union. Already the wartime
alliance had disintegrated. In September of 1945 both %e Army and Navy suggested to
President Truman that collaboration with the British continue for the present "in view of
the disturbed conditions of the world and the necessity of keeping informed of the technical
developments and possible hostile intentions of foreign nations. . . ." In reply, Truman
signed a brief, single-sentence note sent to him by the Joint Chiefs of Staff:
The Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy are hereby authorjied to direct the Chief of
Staff, U.S. Army, Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet, and Chief of Navai\6perations to continue
collaboration in the field of communication intelligence between the Uiited States Army and
Navy and the British, and to extend, modify, or discontinue this collaboration, as determined to
be in the best interests of the United States. 20
Now that the American side was officially unleashed to collaborate with the British, it
seemed necessary to write a bilateral agreement for the postwar yearsA. After months of
meetings and conferences, the two sides sat down in March 1946 to sigh the British-U.S.,
or BRUSA, Agreement. The paper which charted the future course of bo|4 countries was
only four pages long.. (The policy conference at which it was signed wa* followed by a
technical con ference which wrote all the fine print appearing later as, annexes and
appendices.) I " '■ \"
With the signing of the BRUSA Agreement, the BOURBON l iaison offices on both sides
of the Atlantic became representatives of STANCIB and LSIB,
\ | The BOURBON officer,
Commander Grant Manson, was invested with the rather cumbersome title of U.S. Liaison
Officer, London SIGINT Centre (LSIC, as GC&CS was then known) - or USLO LSIC. He
reported to STANCIB through the deputy coordinator for Liaison, part of the new CJO
structure. In early 1946 the British moved LSIC from its wartime location at Bletchley to
Eastcote, outside London, and began using a new title, Government Communications
Headquarters, or GCHQ. Space for Manson was provided at Eastcote. The BOURBON
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liaison office had maintained an office in London, and Manson had to cover two locations,
in Eastcote and London. (This situation continues to this day, with NSA holding offices in
both London and Cheltenham.) USLO never controlled the TICOM group, which also
found quarters at Eastcote. 21
The British, meanwhile, had a more difficult problem. While the U.S. dealt with only
one COMINT organization, GCHQ, the British had two - the Army at Arlington Hall
Station and the Navy at Nebraska Avenue. Not wishing to choose, the British
diplomatically located their liaison officer in the State Department building in downtown
Washington. (They did, however, maintain a technical staff at Arlington Hall.) Their first
liaison officer was Colonel Patrick Marr^Johnson, who had signed the BRUSA Agreement
for the British side. When he retired in 1949, he was succeeded by Tiltman, who was
already well known to the Americans and had served for a time as Travis's deputy at
GC&CS. This began a practice, continued to this day, of assigning very senior cryptologic
officials to the respective liaison offices, and the USLO eventually became SUSLO - Senior
U.S. Liaison Officer. 22
And where were the British Dominions in all this? They were mentioned in the
BRUSA Agreement, and it was agreed that they would not be termed Third Parties, but
they were not direct and immediate partners in 1946. Arrangements that Great Britain
might make with them would be communicated to STANCIB. STANCIB, in turn, would
make no arrangement with a Dominion without coordination with LSIB. Thus the now-
famous UKUSA Agreement was not that at all; at least to begin with. It was a BRUSA
Agreement. How it became the UKUSA Agreement was a development that spanned
another eight years.
Of the three dominions with which the Americans eventually associated, the
relationship with Canada began first. Canadian-American SIGINT cooperation appears to
have begun in 1940, in the form of service-to-service collaboration between the respective
armies and navies. These decentralized arrangements were eventually overtaken by a
centralized relationship centering on the Examination Unit of the National Research
Council, established in 1941 as one of those clever cover terms denoting a Canadian SIGINT
organization. Its purpose was to decodp traffic to and from the Vichy delegation in Ottawa.
This unit's control was gradually broadened until it was the dominant force in Canadian
cryptology. (It was the linear predecessor of the postwar organization Communications
Branch, National Research Council [CBNRC] and its successor, Communications Security
Establishment [CSE].) By 1943 it had its own submarine tracking room and was receiving
plots from the British based on ENIGMA decrypts. When the British began cooperating
with the U.S. in 1941, they requested that the U.S. bring the Examination Unit into the
scope of the cooperation. But the Americans were leery. They knew that the Examination
Unit had been established by Herbert 0. Yardley, the renegade American cryptologist who
had published cryptologic secrets in 1931 in The American Black Chamber. The Signal
Intelligence Service, which had been victimized by Yardley's revelations, informed the
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British that they were willing to cooperate only if Yardley were let goA.The British,
holding no brief for Yardley, had the Canadians get rid of him, and collaboration with the
Americans flowered. By April of 1942 details of the Canadian-American cooperation were
hammered out. Collaboration was particularly close in direction finding (DP) of German
naval vessels.
(b) (1)
J But the United States was suspicious; Canada had just been through a major spy '
scandal, the Gouzenko affair (chapter 4), and USCIB wanted to go slow. Making matters
worse was the head of the Canadian policy committee on COMINT, a rather prickly
character -efused for several years to adopt some of the
security procedures which the United States and Great Britain had agreed upon at the
BRUSA Corjference^_Morepver, while the United States wanted a formal document on
COMINT cooperation
two countries finally agreed to exchanm
lid-not^ ~ After several years of
letters Between
won the battle of
very diff icult negotiations, the
and USCIB chairman
the legal documentation while
Major General C. P. Cabell. Thus
the United States got its way on security procedures. 23
Furthest from the mainstream were the Australians. British-Australian COMINT
collaboration appears to have begun, in the late 1930s when a small Australian
cryptographic organization under the Director of Naval Intelligence began working with
the British Par Eastern Combined Bureau (PECB) in Singapore. In early 1940 an
Australian naval commander named T.E. Nave set up the nucleus of an Australian SIGINT
group in Melbourne, which was the origin of the modern Australian SIGINT organization.
Its most important organization was the Central Bureau, set up in April 1942 as a
combined Australian-American COMINT group. When the Americans departed in 1945,
the Australian remnant of Central Bureau became Defence Signals Bureau (DSB).
The British were determined that DSB should enjoy the same status on BOURBON as
the Canadian, and, immediately after the war, began including the Australians in their
technical exchanges. But in 1947 this procedure became embroiled in a lengthy dispute
over Australian security practices. The procedures in dispute were arcane, and the origins
were almost as difficult to fathom, but both apparently originated with a spy scandal.
In 1947 SIS succeeded in decrypting some KGB messages which had been sent more
than a year earlier and which contained certain classified British military estimates. The
messages came from the Soviet embassy in Canberra, and it was immediately assumed
that an Australian was passing classified information. The British, alerted by the
Americans, sent Sir Percy Sillitoe, chief of British Secret Service, to Australia to discuss
this with the prime minister. Sir Percy was under instructions to conceal the origins of the
information, and when the prime minister, a Laborite named Chifley, demanded proof,
Sillitoe mumbled something rather lame about a possible mole. After considerable
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discussion, Chifley agreed to establish a new^ustralian security organization, called the
Australian Security Intelligence OrganizatiokX
With the Australian security house supposedly in order, the British prime minister,
Clement Attlee, intervened with President Truman to get a new hearing of the Australian
matter. Attlee complained in a letter to Truman that:
The intermingling of American and British knowledge^, all these fields is so great that to be
certain of denying American classified information to the Australians, we should have to deny
them the greater part of our own reports. We should thus be placed in a disagreeable dilemma of
having to choose between cutting off relations with the United States in defence questions or
cutting off relations with Australia. 24
With matters at the crisis level, Attlee proposed to Truman that Sir Francis Shedden,
the powerful and respected Australian defense minister, visit the United States to plead
the case. Truman accepted, and Shedden visited Washington in April. But he was unable
to sway USCIB, and the British were back to their dilemma - Whether to choose the United
States or the Commonwealth as allies. In 1949 the outcome was anything but certain.
Then one of those unexpected quirks of fate intervened whicli was to save the day: the
Labor government under Chifley went down to defeat at the polls.Xand Robert Menzies
formed a new Liberal-Country Party coalition in December. Thij conservative Menzies
was able to successfully disassociate his government from the leftiskeleinents of the Labor
government. This was critical since the actual source of the leaks wa> knbwn (through the
VENONA project; see chapter 4) to be two leftists within the Australian diplomatic corps.
With a Conservative government in power, USCIB authorized a limited "resumption of
cryptologic exchange with Australia. Full resumption of ties did not occur until 1953. The
incident tarnished American-Australian intelligence cooperation for years and caused a
serious rift with Britain which was made worse just a few years later with the Klaus Fuchs
case and the Burgess and McClean defections. It also had a deleterious affect on early U.S.
SIGINT efforts against the People's Republic of China (PRC). 25 \
By 1953 relations had warmed to the point where Australia was reincorporated as a
full COMINT partner. The foundations of the Australian participation in the, UKUSA
Agreement (the name BRUSA was changed at Britis h request a year later) came at\he
Melbourne Tripartite Conference of September 1953
New Zealand came inasa fifth partner,! f\New
Zealand had contributed mainly DF to the Allied cryptologic effort in World War II \nd
had sent people to Australia to serve with the Commonwealth effort in Brisbane, j
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(b) (1)
(b) (3)-18 USC 798
(b) (3J-E.L. 86-36 (b) (3) -50 USC 403
(b) (3)-P.'L. 86-36
Notes
1. Ronald Lev/in, The American Magic: Codes, Ciphers, and the Defeat of Japan (New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux,1982),24.
2. Robert L. Benson, "A History of U.S. Communications Intelligence during World War II: Policy and
Administration," manuscript pending CCH publication. Hereafter Benson "History."
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid. \
5. Ibid.
6. George F . Howe, "The Narrative History of AFSA/NSA," part I, unpublished manuscript available in CCH.
Hereafter Howe "Narrative."
7. Ibid. \
8. USNSG, "U.S. Naval Communication Supplementary Activities in the Koreak Conflict, June 1950 - August
1953," in CCH Series V.M.3.I.; BensonTHistory"; SRH 149, Records of the National Security Agency, Record
Group 457, National Archives, Washington, D.C.; oral history interview with RADM Earl E. Stone, 9 Feb 1983,
Carmel, California by Robert D. Farley, NSA OH 3-83.
9. NSA retired records, CACL 60, TVC 1317; [Edward S. Wiley] On Watch: ProfUes from the National Security
Agency's Past40 Years (Ft. Meade: NSA/CSS, 1986), 13.
10. CCHSeriesVI.l.l.l.;X.H.7.5.
11. Oral history interview with Dr. Abraham Sinkov, May 1979, by Arthur J. Zoebelein f" |p a le
Marston, and Samuel Snyder, NSA OH 2-79; Howe, "Narrative."
12. Oral history interview with Col. (USAF Ret.) John P. Shean, 18 April 1984, by Robert D. Farley, NSA OH 16-
84; memo to Chief, AFSA-90, 14 Dec 1948, in CCH Series V.C.2.12.
13. NSA/CSS Archives, ACC 26350, CBSK 32.
14. Philip S. Meilinger.ifoytS. Vandenberg: The Life of a General (Bloomington, Ind.: University of Indiana
Press, 1989).
15. NSA/CSS Archives, ACC 26350, CBSK 32; oral history interview with Gordon W. Sommers, Hqs ESC,
January 1990, by Millard R. EUerson and James E. Pierson; Richard R. Ferry, "A Special Historical Study of the
Organizational Development of United States Air Force Security Service from 1948-1963," Hq USAFSS, 1963.
16. "An Oral History Interview: The Electronic Security Command - Its Roots; Featuring the Founder of
USAFSS/ESC, Lt. Gen. Richard P. Klocko (USAF, Ret)," Hqs ESC, 20 October 1989.
17. The history of the CJO is covered in detail in Howe, "Narrative," and in Thomas L. Burns, The Origins of the
National Security Agency, 1940-1952, United States Cryptologic History, Series V, Vol. I (Ft. Meade: CCH,
1990). Hereafter Burns, Origins.
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JOP SCCnETTj ltfflfiA
18. NSA/CSS Archives, ACC 16824, CBTB 26; Jeffrey 4. Richelson and Desmond Ball, The Ties that Bind
(Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1985), 136-7. Hereafter Richelson, Ties.
19. "A Chronology Df the Cooperation Between the SSA and the London Offices of GCCS," 2 June 1945, CCH
Series Vl.V.7.2. In addition, the entire Army-British and Navy-British relationships during the war are covered
in detail in Benson, "History."
20> CCH Series V.A.29. The early collaboration with the British on the Soviet problem is covered in George P.
Howe "^1 ("Historical Study of COMINT Production Under the Joint Operating Plan, 1946-
1949," in CCH Series V.E.1.1., and in Michael Peterson, "Early BOURBON - 1946. The First Year of Allied
Collaborative COMINT Effort against the Soviet Union," Cryptologic Quarterly (Spring 1994).
21. See Howe, "Narrative"; Burns, Origins; Beiison, "History"; Peterson, "Early BOURBON"- and CCH Series
VI.J.1.2.
22. "Origins of the SUSLOs," in CCH Series &H.8.
23. "Historical Summary of U.S.-Canadian/COMINT Relations," 12 April 1949, in CCH Series V.J.3.; NSA/CSS
Archives, ACC 16824, CBTB 26; Riehelson j Ties; oral history interview with Frank B. Rowlett, various dates, by
Henry F. Schorreck and | ft SA OH 14-81. See also Howe, Jvcrratfue, and Benson, "History."
24. Copies of papers from the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri, in CCH Series
XVI.
25. The early problems between the U.S. and Australia in COMINT cooperation is covered in Richelson, Ties;
Howe, "Narrative"; Benson, "History"; copies of papers from the Dwight David Eisenhower Presidential Library
in Abilene, Kansas, contained in CCH Series XVI. Specific information about the Australian spy scandal and its
impact on COMINT collaboration is covered in Christopher Andrew, "The Growth of the Australian Intelligence
Community and the Anglo-American Connection," Intelligence and National Security (April 1989), V. 4, # 2: 213-
256; Robert Manne, The Petrov Affair: Politics and Espionage (Sydney: Pergamon, 1987); and Desmond Ball and
David Horner, "To Catch a Spy: Signals Intelligence and Counter-espionage in Australia, 1944-1 949" (Canberra:
Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, 1993), pending publication.
26. Vincent Las Casas, NSA's Involvement in U.S. Foreign SIGINT Relationships through 1993, United States
Cryptologic History, Series VI, Vol. 4 (Ft. Meade: CCH, 1995).
■ HANDLE VIA TALENT KEYHOLE COMINT CONTROL OYDTEMD JOINTLY
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Chapter 2
AFSA and the Creation of NSA
The formation of AFSA resulted from both technical and budgetary causes. The
technical concerns were first surfaced within the Army Security Agency (ASA) over the
conclusions of a study on World War II German SIGINT done by the Target Intelligence
Committee (TICOM - see chapter 1). TICOM had studied the German failure to crack
high-grade Allied codes and ciphers and concluded that it resulted from a badly
fragmented effort. The Germans mounted at least five different cryptanalytic efforts.
Each competed for resources and attention, and each jealously guarded its resources and
techniques from outside encroachment. 1
The result was failure. As Frank Rowlett, perhaps the leading ASA cryptanalyst in
1948, said, "they all skimmed the cream off and they did the easy ones and nobody, none of
them, were [sic] ever able to concentrate on the more important and more secure systems
and bring them under control. "
THE STONE BOARD
The disastrous results of German cryptologic competition spurred Rowlett and his
associates to press for unification of the American effort. In 1948, under the direction of
Brigadier General Carter Clarke, Rowlett chaired a committee to write a paper proposing
cryptologic unification. The committee included some of the leading names in subsequent
American cryptology, including Herbert Conley, Benson Buffham and Gordon Sommers.
Rowlett's concerns were mainly technical. With so many good cryptanalysts leaving the
services, there was a greater need than ever to concentrate resources. Fragmentation
would guarantee the same fate that had met the Germans. This technical argument had
been supported in 1946 by the results of the Congressional Pearl Harbor Committee,
which, as part of its final report, recommended cryptologic unification. 2
Army secretary Kenneth Royall was persuaded to support unification, but at his level
the concerns were mainly financial. Royall was concerned that the formation of the new
U.S. Air Force Security Service (USAFSS or simply AFSS) would mean a smaller slice of
the monetary pie for ASA. His report convinced Secretary of Defense James Forrestal,
who in August of 1948 established a DoD-level committee to look into the matter of
cryptologic unification. Although the committee contained members of the intelligence
establishments of all three services, it became known as the Stone Board, after its
chairman, Rear Admiral Earl E. Stone, the director of Naval Communications.
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The Stone Board was anything but harmonious. The Navy was dead set against
unification, and Stone was the "chief arguer" (in his own words) against the concept. He
got the Air Force behind him, and the result was a majority report arguing against the
very concept it had been set up to consider. That report agreed to certain reforms in the
current CJO (Chief of Joint Operations; see chapter 1) set-up, but refused to endorse any
sort of thoroughgoing restructuring. The Army report favored cryptologic unification
under a single agency, but it was only a minority report. The two documents were sent to
Forrestal. Since the majority report favored a sit-tight approach, nothing happened, and
the results of the Stone Board languished in a desk drawer until after the death of
Forrestal in March of 1949. 3
It is important to understand what was going on at that time. The interservice rivalry
which had characterized American conduct of World War II had led to calls for service
unification. The first step toward a reform of the U.S. military structure was the National
Security Act of 1947, which established the Secretary of Defense, the National Security
Council, and the CIA. Although all three institutions have become very powerful, in the
early years they were not, and gaining control of their respective domains was a process
marked by fierce rivalry and bitter infighting. 4
The new secretary of defense,
Louis P. Johnson, arrived at the
Pentagon during the worst of these
interservice clashes. Cryptologic
unification was one of the most hotly
contested issues. The protagonists did
not leave him alone very long. Carter
Clarke pushed Johnson hard on the
issue. According to Clarke's own
description, he approached one of
Johnson's top aides, General Alfred
Gruenther, to resurrect the Stone
Board documents. Clarke argued that
lack of unification was partly
responsible for the failure at Pearl
Harbor. Johnson, apparently
impressed by this, called in General
Joseph T. McNarney, a known
supporter of unification. McNarney
wrote a report which recommended
creation of a central organization, Louis A. Johnson,
called the Armed Forces Security secretary of defense In 1949
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Agency, but which retained the separate cryptologic organizations of the three services.
The report was then discussed at a JCS meeting on 18 May 1949. At this meeting the Air
Force chief of staff, General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, changed the Air Force vote to pro-
unification. The minority had suddenly become the majority, and it was clear that
unification was to be forced through. The Navy quickly reversed its vote, too, and the
decision to create AFSA was unanimous.
Why did Vandenberg change the Air
Force vote? He may have seen the creation
of AFSA as an essential ingredient in
better intelligence, but he may also have
felt that he could keep the fledgling USAF
Security Service effectively independent.
Vandenberg's central concern in those days
was to establish a strategic strike force
(Strategic Air Command, or SAC) which
would be supported by an all-Air Force
intelligence center. He regarded SIGINT as
the key ingredient in such a creation and
wanted to place a SIGINT analysis center
within USAFSS which would be beyond
the control of AFSA. It is possible that he
changed the Air Force vote after
assurances that, USAFSS would be
permitted to establish such a center. (This
center, called the Air Force Special
Communications Center,, was actually
created, and it resided at Kelly Air Force
Base, home of USAFSS, fo r many
years.) The later creation of the
lis"
Hoyt S. Vandenberg
Provided the "swing vote"
that created AFSA
__]a device to keep intercept facilities independent of AFSA, might also
have been part of such a plan. Vandenberg's thinking was probably also influenced by
log-rolling in other areas, and may have represented an attempt to obtain Army support
for other Air Force programs by yielding on the cryptologic issue. 5
AFSA
And so the Armed Forces Security Agency was created on 20 May 1949. It was
promulgated by JCS directive 2010. AFSA was thoroughly military, and, because it
answered to the JCS, its central concerns were all military. Organizations outside the JCS
got short shrift in the collection of intelligence. State Department and CIA were intensely
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unhappy with this development, but they lacked the power to wrench AFSA out of the
military chain of command.
AFSA began life in borrowed quarters. Its people, just over 5,000 in the beginning,
occupied spaces in Arlington Hall and the Naval Security Station on Nebraska Avenue,'
sharing space with the Army Security Agency and Naval Security Group from which the
space was obtained. Admiral Stone decided that the Naval Security Station would be used
by AFSA for COMSEC, while the COMINT mission would be done at Arlington Hall. This
decision began a historic physical separation between SIGINT and COMSEC which has never
been completely bridged, despite the later move to Fort Meade. It was logical, though.
Naval Security Group (NSG; formerly OP-20-G) was strong in the COMSEC discipline.
Moreover, the Naval Security Station (NSS) at Nebraska Avenue had only about one-
fourth the space available that Arlington Hall did, and this disparity in size meant that
NSS was about the right size for COMSEC, while the larger spaces at Arlington Hall would
be ideal for COMINT. There was a certain amount of shuffling back and forth as COMINTers
from NSS moved their desks to Arlington Hall and COMSEC people from Arlington Hall
transferred to NSS. But when it was finished, all the COMSEC people were housed in
almost 214,000 square feet of office space at NSS, while the COMINT operations were lodged
in 360,000 square feet at Arlington Hall. Including administrative, storage and machine
space, there were only 79 square feet per worker at the Hall, but about 98 square feet at
NSS.
Workers often sat at tables rather than desks, in large warehouse-like rooms, cheek-
by-jowl, as they worked complex code or callsign systems. Floors were tiled and the noise
level was high. There was practically no air conditioning, and in the summertime it was
common to close down for the day when the ratio of temperature to humidity got too high.
AFSA owned two other facilities. The cryptologic school, a rudimentary training
ground used originally to keep newly hired workers busy before their clearances came
through (see p. 71), reposed in a structure on U Street Northwest in the District of
Columbia. The Agency also maintained a courier facility at National Airport, then called
Congressional Airport. 6
The impact of AFSA on the services was immediate and severe. Besides turning over
more than 600,000 square feet of space to the new organization, the Army and Navy had to
donate about 80 percent of their existing Washington-area billets - 79 percent for ASA and
86 percent for NSG. Although ASA kept many of its uniformed service people, its corps of
over 2,500 civilian experts was turned over to AFSA virtually intact. This made the
Service Cryptologic Agencies little more than collection organizations, with practically no
central processing - all arms and legs, but no body. This revolution was accomplished
virtually overnight with only minimal dissension and was AFSA's most noteworthy
success.
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Analytic section,
Arlington Hall Station
The sole exception to this trend was USAFSS. The Air Force cryptologic agency
practically seceded, opening its first headquarters at Brooks AFB, Texas, 1,600 miles away
from the menace of centralization. Even more startling, it was required to donate only
thirty officers, twenty civilians, and eighty enlisted billets to AFSA. So when USAFSS
opened its processing center, it had plenty of billets to do it with. If this was what
Vandenberg had in mind, it was working. 7
AFSA organization reflected service competition. The director was to be chosen from
among the three services on a rotating basis, and its first director was its most ardent
opponent, Earl Stone. Assisting him were three deputy directors, one for each service
Below them were four major divisions, which have survived to this day - Operations
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jSJ&secffETujytiRA
Research and Development, CGMSEC, and Administration. The office designator system
was numerical, so that Operations was AFSA 02, R&D was 03, COMSEC was 04, and
Administration was 05/ Each of the military deputy directors also had a sphere of
influence. The Navy ,d#ujy director, CaptaiM\loseph Wenger, controlled comint, while
the Army deputy, pbjonej Samuel |P. CollinsW$upervised COMSEC, and the Air Force
deputy, Colonel Roy ^ynri, handled administratiyb matters. 8
The field collection effort/consisted of the Stitercept sites which had survived the
budget cuts after/ World War ; I I. Army SecurijyU gency^had seven sites: V int Hill,
Virginia; Petaluma. California: |~1 \\]Helemario, Hawaii;
iFairbanks. Alaska: and Clark AFB in the Philippines. The Navy had twelve:
j\dak, Alaska;
Dupont, South Carolina;
JSkaggs Island, California; Cheltenham, Maryland;
1952 ASA had seven mobile units, while the Navy had three.
AFSA's lack of tasking authority over Air Force positions was intolerable, and late in
1950 Major General C. P. Cabell, Air Force director of intelligence, and Rear Admiral
Stone signed an agreement granting AFSA the authority to task automatic Morse and
radioprinter positions, while USAFSS retained control over voice. The Morse positions
The Air Force had ten mobile units, whose status and location were somewhat vague.
Finally, ASA had six SHAMROCK units, whose task was to screen commercial cable
messages turned over to ASA by the cable companies under an arrangement which had
existed since World War II. 9
Field intercept was the rock that sank AFSA. In theory all the intercept positions
were to be under AFSA control. In fact, some were not. Of the 763 intercept positions
existing at the time AFSA was dissolved, 671, including all the Army positions, were
under some form of AFSA control. Just over 100 were reserved by the Navy for fleet
support and were thus completely beyond AFSA tasking authority. But even the positions
under AFSA control could be tasked only by treading a complex paper mill by which
tasking was routed through the SCAs, rather than being levied directly. This was true
especially in the Navy and Air Force - the Army was more accommodating and permitted
some form of direct tasking.
Completely beyond AFSA purview, however, were the mobile intercept stations. In
theory, these were small mobile efforts for direct tactical support. But AFSS flouted AFSA
control by simply designating all their stations as "mobile." Thus even th e most
permanent and sedentary station was designated as a "radio group mobile" or a\ /
J( beyond AFSA control. The Army and Navy quickly caught on, and by
<b) (1)
(b) (3)-50 USC 403
(b) (3)-P.L. 86-36
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were split 50/50. Still later, in 1951, this arrangement was changed when the new director
of AFSA, Lieutenant General Canine, and Colonel Lynn of USAFSS signed an agreement
dividing the Air Force positions down the middle, regardless of modi of intercept.
Meanwhile, USAFSS established its headquarters in San AnWl - first at Brooks
AFB and later at nearby Kelly AFB, on a low rise west of the runway w^iich is now known
as Security Hill. Within its headquarters it proceeded to establish aj Stateside COMINT
processing center, Air Force Special Communications Center (AFSCCJ). This was done
despite direct orders by Canine that it not be estab lished. Af SA abo directed that
USAFSS not establish third-echelon processing on the I I target! but USAFSS did
it anyway. Air Force defiance fragmented the processing effort and ha d much to d o with
the demise of AFSA. Despite this, AFSCC continued to process on the | [ target
until the late 1960s, when it was finally turned into an electronic warfare center. 10
Service rivalry led to duplication. During the early days of the Korean War, for
instance, both ASA and USAFSS covered the Soviet and Chinese air problems in the
Korean area, and ASA did not discontinue its coverage until March of 1952, after many
months of AFSA mediation. Likewise in the DF area, AFSA was unable to force a common
DF net control for the Korean problem for more than a year. Ultimately the Navy kept its
DF system separate. All three SCAs established second-echelon processing centers in the
Pacific with or without AFSA blessing. Without firm control of SIGiNT, there was simply
no way to organize effectively. This lack of control attracted unfavorable reviews from the
generals trying to fight the Korean War and played a part in the COMINT reorganisation of
1952."
The final blow to AFSA was the development of a policy mechanism outside of AFSA
itself. It was called the Armed Forces Security Advisory Committee (AFSAC), and it was
created by the same JCS directive that established AFSA. The original plan was for an
advisory committee composed of nine members - three from each service - chaired by the
director of AFSA. But the JCS gradually changed AFSAC's charter from advisory to
directive. Had AFSAC possessed a proper decision-making mechanism, the conversion of
its role to that of direction might have worked after a fashion. But the rules required
unanimity on all substantive matters. 12 AFSAC was immediately immobilized by
interservice disputes and was ineffective from the start. AFSA had become a body with no
head.
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One small success during these early years was the development of customer liaison
organizations. By 1949 both the Army G2 and the Office of Naval Intelligence had
established informal liaison offices with their cryptologi? counterparts at Arlington Hall
and NSS. When AFSA was established, these arrangements continued undisturbed. Both
the Army and Navy groups developed a very close relationship with AFSA, and their
people often worked in an intelligence production role./ By the end of the Korean War, the
Army organization, which called itself SRB (Special Research Branch), had some fifty
people. Air Force Intelligence had a similar ground which was gradually subsumed by
AFSS into a large organization of over sixty people performing both a customer (for Air
Force Intelligence) and producer (for AFSS) role. Thus the Air Force group performed both
as a producer and consumer, while the Army and Navy acted only as producers.
Both CIA and State maintained small offices within AFSA, under a USCIB edict of
1948. Although AFSA regulations permitted them to see semiprocessed intelligence, they
never participated in the production process, Maintaining their offices for liaison purposes
only. FBI's refusal to establish any office ; at all reflected J. Edgar Hoover's adamant
opposition to COMINT centralization. 13
While COMINT was fractious, COMSEC/was relatively serene. During World War II
there had been a single authority for joint service communications matters, the U.S. Joint
Communications Board, established in July of 1942. Its principal members were the chiefs
of communications for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. In 1948 it gave way to a new
organization, the Joint Communications-Electronics Committee (JCEC), which reigned
supreme in this area for many years thereafter. The JCEC was concerned with
communications planning, standards, and interoperability, but its charter by implication
gave it a deterniining voice in COMSEC policy as well.
When AFSA was created, JCEC effectively transferred central COMSEC functions to it.
The charter did not extend to non-JCS organizations, but the State Department and other
civilian agencies with communications security concerns had for years relied on the Army
and Navy for COMSEC support;/ and this reliance was transferred to AFSA. AFSA began
producing codes and ciphers for all the armed services and many of the non-DoD agencies.
In addition, it undertook centralized COMSEC R&D functions, planning and programming,
setting of security standards, and technical supervision of the communications security
activities of the armed services. The SCAs retained many residual functions, such as
distribution of AFSA-produced codes, security monitoring of transmissions, and the like."
While AFSA successfully controlled the highly technical function of COMSEC, it was
never able to control COMINT. This lack of control made powerful enemies. The State
Department was up set because, under AFSA, the number of positions allocated to
Jactually declined in the three years of AFSA existence, from 64 to 51,
and from almost 17 percent of the total to only 6.5 percent.
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. Tnt>irr;nrTUM[»w
THE BROWNELL COMMITTEE
The entire intelligence community was concerned over performance of the COMINT
system in Korea. AFSA had not predicted the outbreak of war. A watch committee
established under the wing of CIA in early 1950 listed Korea fifth on the list of world
trouble spots, but this was not translated int o action, and when the war began AFSA still
had no positions allocated to Korean military.
^ :
AFSA had no more dangerous opponent
than Walter Bedell Smith, director of Central
Intelligence. In 1950 the wartime feud
between the COMINT empire and Smith's
HUMINT organization boiled over. On 10
December of that year Smith wrote a
memorandum recommending that a
committee be established to "survey" COMINT.
Smith was "gravely concerned as to the
security and effectiveness with which
Communications Intelligence activities . . .
are being conducted." He pointed to "the
system of divided authorities and multiple
responsibilities" which was endangering
national security. The National Security
Council in turn forwarded the
recommendation to President Truman, who
directed that a committee be formed.
Walter Bedell Smith TheJCScould not take heart from the
Director of Central Intelligence composition of the comittee. Its chairman
was George A. Brownell, a New York lawyer
and layman in intelligence matters. The members were Charles Bohlen, a prominent
State Department official; William H. Jackson, special assistant to the DCI; and Brigadier
General John Magruder, special assistant to the secretary of defense. Thus the Joint
Chiefs, who owned the COMINT organizations, had no one on the committee. It was
composed of "enemies," representatives from State and CIA - the two most vocal opponents
of the existing system.
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George A. Brownell
The Brownell Committee held fourteen days of formal sessions, which were backed lip
by many days of research and data-gathering. Its report was a scathing indictment of the
old ways of doing business. Its bottom line stated bluntly that j
, \ The added difficulty of the problem under attack places j
a greater premium than ever on the quantity and quality of the physical and intellectual )
resources available, and on the efficiency and clarity of the organization charged with the task. j
While much has recently been done to provide adequate physical resources for the job, the \
Committee is convinced that the present organization of our COMINT activities seriously i .
impedes the efficiency of the operation, and prevents us from attracting and retaining as much
top quality scientific management manpower as this country ought to be investing in so i
important a field. It is highly significant t o the Committee that the return of many of the best
wartime COMINT brains to more attractive " j
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The committee concluded that the creation of AFSA, coinciding as it had with the
creation of USAFSS, had resulted in four COMINT agencies where there had formerly been
two. It criticized AFSAC for obstructionism and requested that it be abolished. It attacked
USAFSS as a virtually autonomous organization not operating under joint control at all.
The positive recommendations of the Brownell Committee are worth studying,
because they encompass the present-day structure of SIGINT in the United States. AFSA
should be greatly strengthened, especially in its ability to control tasking at SCA
collection sites. AFSA or its successor should be removed from JCS control and should be
placed under USCIB, whose membership should be revised, and whose procedures should
be governed by a vote of four, rather than unanimity, as had been the case with AFSAC.
AFSA should centralize and consolidate processing operations wherever possible to
increase the resources brought to bear on intractable cryptanalytic problems. The director
should be upgraded to three-star rank, and should be appointed by the president to a four-
year term. He should have a civilian deputy. Civilian career development should be
encouraged to a much greater extent than formerly.
The next several months were spent putting the Brownell report into directive
language. The result was the Truman Memorandum, issued on 24 October 1952. This
memo directed a complete restructuring of COMINT along the lines that Brownell
recommended. It resolved an on-going dispute about how to change AFSA by abolishing it
and creating in its place a new organization called NSA. Its director would work for the
secretary of defense, who would become the "executive agent" for COMINT for the entire
government. On the same date the National Security Council issued a revised NSCID 9,
almost a verbatim quote of the Truman Memorandum. Both documents were classified
Top Secret, thus hiding the official creation of NSA from the American public for many
years.
All that remained was for the secretary of defense to issue a memorandum
establishing the new agency. He did so on 4 November the day that Dwight Eisenhower
defeated Adlai Stevenson for the presidency. The creation of NSA was one of the last
historical legacies of twenty years of Democratic governance.
The Truman Memorandum, on the advice of Lieutenant General Canine, had excluded
COMSEC. Despite his belief that NSA should have both a COMINT and a COMSEC role,
Canine recommended against mixing both in the same document. Lovett's memorandum
on 4 November did mention that NSA would inherit the COMSEC functions formerly
performed by AFSA. A memo in December spelled out those functions in more detail, and
this marked NSA's first formal COMSEC charter. 11
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KOREA
It has become apparent . . . that during the between-wars interim we have lost, through neglect,
disinterest and possibly jealousy, much of the effectiveness in intelligence work that we acquired
so painfully in World War II. Today, our intelligence operations in Korea have not yet
approached the standards that we reached in the final year of the last war.
General A. James Van Fleet, Commanding General 8th Army, June 1952
The Country
American intelligence interest and attention, so painfully refocused on the Soviet
threat after World War II, were not to be rewarded. The next war occurred not in Europe,
where allies and commitments were, but in Korea, a remote Asian peninsula whose name
many Americans had never heard in 1950.
Korea had, throughout its recorded history, been a battleground between China,
Japan, and Russia. Frequently invaded and occupied, its primary purpose seemed to be as
a strategic buffer among three conflicting imperial ambitions. The most recent change of
ownership had come after the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. Russia, the loser, was
forced to cede its influence. Korea became forcibly Japanese.
The Allied powers recognized during World War II that Korea was one of those
geopolitical oddities whose status had to be resolved. It obviously could not remain
Japanese, and so at the Cairo Conference of 1943 Roosevelt endorsed a policy that would
ensure a "free and independent Korea." At Yalta in April of 1945, the Big Three (the
United States, the USSR, and Britain) agreed to an Allied trusteeship, to be administered
by the three plus China.
Nothing further happened until the USSR declared war on Japan on 8 August 1945,
simultaneously invading Manchuria and Korea. The sudden movement of Soviet troops
onto the peninsula appeared to portend Soviet occupation, and MacArthur was directed to
rush troops to the southern end of Korea. The United States proposed a division of
military occupation on the 38th Parallel, splitting the peninsula roughly in half. Moscow
unexpectedly agreed, and still more unexpectedly, complied.
American forces dwindled down to about 30,000 by 1948. In March of that year
President Harry Truman/following the country's mood of dedicated military budget-
cutting, decided that America would simply have to abandon Korea to the United Nations,
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CHINA
MANCHURIA
SlNAXftr
NORTH KOREA
JNCIKJ** . %£Qii
TAEK
SOUTH KOREA
FAKGL
JAPAN
Korea, 1950
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to sink or swim on its own. He decided to end the American trusteeship and sponsor free
elections. So in the spring of 1948 American forces marched out of Korea. The South
boycotted the elections, which led to a new National Assembly and a government headed
by Syngman Rhee, a seventy-three-year-old militant anti-Communist who had spent forty
years in exile in the United States waiting for the liberation of his homeland. The North
formed its own government, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), headed by
a young thirty-six-year-old Communist named Kim Il-sung. The peninsula was divided at
the waist.
Syngman Rhee Rim Il-sung
The Asia Dilemma
In 1949 catastrophe struck in the Far East. The corrupt and despotic Chiang Kai-shek
and his Nationalists were ousted by the Communist forces of Mao Tse-tung. As the
Communists marched into Beijing, Chiang fled to the island of Formosa (Taiwan), some
100 miles off the coast, followed by as much of his army as could flee with him. By the end
of the year, Mao was making confident proclamations about his intent to invade Formosa
and drive Chiang and his army into the sea.
In Washington, the administration was convulsed over whether the United States
should support Chiang and the Nationalists. In the end the anti-Chiang faction won, and
Truman, on 5 January 1950, issued a public statement that the United States had adopted
a "hands off Formosa" policy. Ambiguity about which side of the line Korea stood on was
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resolved a week later when Secretary W State Dean Acheson, at a press conference,
described an American sphere of interest^ the Pacific that implicitly excluded Korea.
By June 1950 the United States had boxed itself into a very weak position in Korea.
From a full army corps, it was reduced to k 500-man Korean Military Aid Group (KMAG).
The U.S. had left behind plans and equipment for a 50,000-man ROK (Republic of Korea)
"constabulary" (rather than a real army) b\it devoid of heavy equipment, as the U.S. was
afraid that the militant Rhee would use it to invade the North. Rhee drew up plans for a
real army of 100,000, and he succeeded in extracting additional American commitments of
weapons (but still no heavy, mobile offensive weapons). On the other side of the 38th
Parallel stood a DPRK army and air force of\about 135,000 men, equipped by the Soviets
with much of the heavy equipment that the Americans had denied to Rhee.
American military forces, overall, in 1950 \were in a weakened state. Defense budgets
had continued to decline from their World Wir II peak, and the defense budget for 1950
was only $12.3 billion, with an authorized AVmy strength of 630,000 (but an actual
strength of only 591,000). Of these, only 108,500 were in the Far East, almost all of them
in Japan. In line with administration policy, thb Pentagon had no plans to defend Korea
and no one there to do it. The American contingency plan for the peninsula was basically
to evacuate all dependents to Japan. 18 \
Parallel to the national lack of interest in KoVea was AFSA's neglect of the problem.
There were no documented high-priority national intelligence requirements on Korea, and
the only requirement that related at all was couched in terms of keeping track of Soviet
interest in the peninsula. At the time AFSA had "ho person or group of persons working
on a North Korean problem. " During the previous jlear, SCA intercept sites had stumbled
onto som ej J North Korean message^ which were originally collected as
suspectedl IWhen in Mav 1949 thpso messages were identified as North
Korea^ two intercept positions at| l and a tactical unit not under AFSA
(b) (1)
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conteoi, were tasked with follow-up copy. AFSA had no Korean linguists, no Korean
dictionaries, no traffic analytic aids, and no Korean typewriters. 19
/ No one really expected an invasion in Korea. There was fragmentary humint
i reporting, generally disbelieved by all, that there could be an invasion by North Korea in
1950. In March an Army organization called the Intelligence Indications Steering
Committee cited the possibility of military activity in Korea sometime in 1950. But this
was set against a general disbelief in the intelligence community that Korea presented a
real problem.
After the war broke out, there was the usual scramble by intelligence agencies to find
the indicators that had been missed. AFSA, for instance, discovered traffic indicating that
there had been large shipments of medical supplies going from the USSR to Korea
beginning in February. A Soviet naval DF net in the Vladivostok area had undergone a
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dramatic switch to South Korean DF tasks beginning in February. 20 This did not quiet the
critics.
The Invasion
About 0330 on Sunday morning, 25 June 1950, Captain Joseph Darrigo, a KMAG
military advisor to the ROK posted near Kaesong, was jarred awake by the roar of
artillery. Darrigo, the only American on the 38th Parallel, was in the middle of an
invasion of North Korean ground forces into South Korea. He managed to make it to the
ROK 1st Division headquarters at Munsan just ahead of the advancing North Korean
forces, and he spread the alarm.
There appears to have been no tactical intelligence warning. A reporter in Seoul got
word of an invasion and rushed to the American embassy for confirmation. At the same
time that he got off a wire to New York, the American ambassador was cabling
Washington. His cable had to be encrypted and decrypted, and it got there late. The
Americans learned of the invasion from the reporter in Seoul. 21
ASA decided to support the fighting with a communications reconnaisance battalion
at Army level and three battalions to serve each of the three corps. The 60th Signal
Service Company at Fort Lewis, Washington, appeared to be closest to being ready for
deployment of any ASA tactical asset, so that organization was selected. But it took time
to get ready, and in the meantime ASA Pacific (ASAPAC) in Hawaii rushed a signal
collection unit to the Korean peninsula, arriving there on 18 September. The Fort Lewis
unit did not arrive until 9 October. 22
Meanwhile, the Truman administration had decided to help the fledgling ROK army
and got UN backing for the deployment of a multinational defensive force to Korea.
Truman directed MacArthur to rush the 8th Army from Japan to Korea, and the first
American troops reentered Korea by air on 1 July. But it took time to get enough troops
into the country, and the DPRK army charged ahead, pushing ROK defensive units ahead
of it pell-mell. By mid-August, ROK defenders had been shoved into a perimeter around
the port city of Pusan, the last remaining large city still under the control of the Rhee
government. When the first ASA unit arrived in September, the ROK army, bolstered by
newly arrived American divisions (the 24th Infantry, 25th Infantry and 1st Cavalry), was
desperately hanging onto this slice of the Korean landmass, and the American and Korean
defenders were in the middle of a fierce struggle to retain the town of Taegu. 23
ASA's primary concern was to get linguists. Perhaps the only two first-rate Army
Korean linguists were Y.P. Kim and Richard Chun, who were both instructors at the
Army Language School in Monterey in 1950. Chun had been cleared in World War II, but
Kim had never been in the COMINT business. ASA needed linguists at Monterey to train
what was expected to be a sudden flood of Korean language students, but they also needed
someone in Korea who could translate Korean. ASA hesitated just a brief moment, and
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then Kim and Chun, neither as ye^ actually cleared for COMINT, were on their way to
Korea to assist the newly arrived ASA tactical COMINT unit. Until their clearances came
through, they worked in a locked and guarded rooih every day. Intercepted messages were
brought in periodically. They would translate thejtraffic and then pass it through a slot in
the wall to the communications center. 24
The Air Force Security/Service likewise had one unit in the Korean area in 1950 - the
1st Radio Squadron Mobile (RSM) at Johnson Air Fjorce Base outside Tokyo. This unit had
been created in 1942, and it had supported 5th Air Force through MacArthur's Pacific
campaign from New 0uinea to Japan. In 1950 it was still engaged in sup port to 5th Air
Force, but by then had changed its mission to \ ~ ^]
]in late June it scrambled to change over to Korean targets. It had no
cryptanalytic capability, and so began with a traffic analytic attack against North Korean
air targets. It likewise had no cleared Korean linguists, so it could do little against
readable voice communications. 25
The Murray Mission
The Air Force Security Service actually beat ASA to Korea - their first representative,
First Lieutenant Edward Murray, arrived in Taegu on 19 July. But Murray's mission
quickly became entangled in one of the most bizzare incidents in the history of American
cryptology.
When Murray arrived, 5th Air Force already had a COMINT service. The origins of that
organization are very murky but appear to go back to the days after the end of World War
II. At the time a civilian named Nichols, who also had a reserve commission as an Air
Force major, headed the local Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Nichols, whose
background and training in COMINT are completely unknown, decided that Korea needed a
COMINT service. The South Korean government under Syngman Rhee did not appear
interested, so Nichols proceeded on his own, seeking out the assistance of some Koreans
with COMINT experience.
Among his recruits was one Cho Yong II, who had come from North Korea, where he
had been a radio operator and cryptanalyst with the North Korean Army. Joining Cho
was Kim Se Won, a captain in the ROK navy. Kim had served as a COMINTer with the
Japanese army in World War II and, owing to having been interned by the U.S. Army in
Hawaii, spoke excellent English. Cho, Kim, and those who worked for them did intercept
and translation work for Nichols; the source of funding has never been discovered. In 1949
Cho, with Nichols's assistance, obtained a commission in the Korean air force (ROKAF),
and his group dual-hatted as a private group working for Nichols and as the ROKAF
COMINT service. At about the same time the ROK navy set up Kim and some colleagues
from the Nichols group as their COMINT service, so they, too, were dual-hatted.
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When the ROK army retreated south in July of 1950, Nichols and his COMINT group
retreated with them. As they fled south, fissures developed between Cho and Kim, and in
late July or early August the Kim group seceded. Cho stayed with Nichols to' supply
COMINT to the Air Force, while Kim eventually hooked up with ASA units entering Korea.
Nichols was reporting directly to 5th Air Force, which was releasing his reports into USAF
intelligence channels at the noncodeword level.
Meanwhile, AFSS had sent Murray to Johnson Air Force Base to put together a direct
support package. Murray assembled some vans and other equipment from 1st RSM, and
on 15 July he flew to Korea to set up a mobile COMINT effort. AFSS was operating under a
misty-eyed concept of COMINT as covert operations, and 1st RSM was directed to expunge
its identifications from the equipment, and to insure that Murray could not be indentified
as a COMiNTer. The direct support went under the codename Project WILLY.
Murray's first concern on arriving in Korea was linguists. Fifth Air Force offered him
eight of them, straight from the Nichols pool. The only problem was that Nichols still
controlled them, and the upshot was that Nichols wound up with 1st RSM's equipment for
use by his own operators. As for 5th Air Force, they were quite happy with the support
they were getting from Nichols and informed Murray that he was no longer needed. First
Lieutenant Murray returned to Japan on 1 August, having utterly failed to set up a
Security Service unit in Korea and having lost his equipment to boot.
The breathless nature of Nichols's coup left USAFSS spinning. A severe jurisdictional
battle ensued, encompassing command organizations in the United States, Japan, and
Korea. Security Service appeared to carry the day, and Murray was ordered back to Korea
on 12 August, armed with a letter of authority from General Banfill (Deputy for
Intelligence, Far East Air Force). But the struggle was far from over. Nichols was still
unwilling to relinquish control of his COMINT organization, and he had the backing of 5th
Air Force. Nichols was a local asset under their complete control, was publishing COMINT
without the restrictive codewords that limited dissemination, and already had the
expertise that Murray lacked. On 17 August, 5th Air Force ordered Murray to catch the
next plane out of Korea. AFSS was again out of the picture.
The Nichols effort was limited by its lack of national-level technical support from
AFSA and USAFSS, and 5th Air Force eventually realized this. On 20 November, 5th Air
Force reversed its earlier position and asked for the deployment of a radio squadron mobile
to Korea to provide support. Cho's group became Detachment 3 of the 1st RSM, and
Nichols disappeared from the scene.
Meanwhile, back in Tokyo 1st RSM was trying to mobilize an effort against the North
Korean air force. When Murray returned to Japan the first time he carried with him some
captured North Korean code books turned over to him by Nichols. Lacking Korean
translators, the unit came upon a Catholic priest named Father Harold Henry, who had
spent a number of years in Korea as an Army chaplain. AFSS agreed to give him access to
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intercepted materials but did not agree to give him an SI clearance. He began applying
the code books to the traffic, and he turned out to be a pretty good cryptanalyst, even
though he was doing the work without benefit of formal clearance. Father Henry produced
the first decrypts of enciphered North Korean air traffic. 26
Counterattack
While ASA and AFSS were having trouble getting organized tactically, AFSA pushed •
rapidly ahead. Despite an almost total lack of expertise and resources to work the
unfamiliar Korean target, codebreakers in Washington succeeded in penetrating North
Korean communications by late July. At the time, DPRK troops were being readied for
their all-out assault on Taegu, which, if successful, might have caused the collapse of the
Pusan perimeter and American defeat. Three divisions of Lieutenant General Walton
Walker's 8th Army were on line with the remnants of five ROK divisions; opposing them
were fourteen battle-tested DPRK infantry divisions. On 26 July AFSA decrypted a North
Korean message which contained much of the battle plan for the assault on the 30th. The
information reached Walker on the 29th, and he shifted his forces to meet the attack, thus
saving Taegu and the Pusan perimeter. 27 It was one of AFSA's most conspicuous
successes.
On 15 September MacArthur launched the spectacular Inchon invasion, the second
largest amphibious landing in history, near Seoul. North Korean troops suddenly had a
large American force in the rear of their operations. On 19 September 8th Army began its
breakout from the Pusan perimeter, and in a brief month they had pushed DPRK forces
back north of Seoul. Syngman Rhee's government formally returned to the capital on 29
September. But the dynamic and committed Rhee wanted to push the fighting into North
Korea, and on 30 September, ROK troops crossed the 38th Parallel. Washington viewed
this development with anxiety. But MacArthur was confident that Chinese and Soviet
forces would not intervene and, like Rhee, lobbied for authority to go all the way to the
Yalu River. The CIA issued an assessment that MacArthur was right. The risks of
invading North Korea appeared minimal, and in the end the Truman administration
backed MacArthur. American forces crossed the 38th Parallel on 9 October, heading
north.
China
The Chinese problem which MacArthur was so blithely underestimating had been
building for years. The postwar COMINT effort against Chinese communications began
officially in 1945 during the mission of General George Marshall to try to get Chiang Kai-
shek and Mao Tse-tung to the bargaining table. Marshall, familiar with what COMINT had
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done during World War II, requested COMINT information from both Commiin% and
Nationalist communications. /
f
ASA mounted a small e ffort against both the Nationalists and Communists.
ASA could still report that the two sides were/ far apart;; and it
was obvious from the COMINT traffic that they were determined to settle/their differences
on the battlefield. The Marshall mission was withdrawn in 1946, and in October of\l949
Mao triumphed. / \
Following the withdrawal of the Marshall mission, the COMINT mission against ckina '
suffered, as ASA employed all available resources against the Soviet target.1 X
.ASA kept only a small section against Chinese civil communication's.
Collection resources were concentrated atj
security problems. 28
When American and South Korean troops crossed the 38th Parallel, the Chinese had
already decided to intervene in North Korea. The decision wag taken at a meeting in
Beijing from 3 to 7 October 1950. On the first day of the conference, Chinese foreign
minister Chou En-Lai called Indian ambassador Panikkar to tell/him of the decision, and
Panikkar relayed this news to the West. But Indians were regarded as pathologically left-
leaning, and Panikkar's communique was disbelieved. Chou's warning was followed up by
Chinese radio broadcasts, but these, too, were disregarded. 29 /
Historian Clay Blair asserts that "when MacArthur returned to Tokyo from Wake
Island [in mid-October] he had no inkling of the CCF armies gathering in North Korea." 30
iof the massing of Chinese
This was wrong. AFSA had clear and convincing evidence/
troops north of the Yalu and had published it in product reports available to the JCS, the
White House, and to MacArthur. As early as July, AFSA/ began noting references in
Chinese civil communications to army units moving north. / Rail hubs in central China
were jammed with soldiers on their way to Manchuria./ By September AFSA had
identified six of the nine field armies that were later involved in the fighting in North
Korea and had located them in Manchuria, near the Korean .border. Ferries at Anshan (on
the Yalu River) were being reserved for military use. Maps of Korea were being ordered in
large quantities. On 7 November, in voice communication 's intercepted and published by
the COMINT community] ~ [stated, "We are already at war
here." 31 1
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Douglas MacArthur with President Truman on Wake Island, 1951
That was not news to the ROK army. On 25 October a ROK division had been badly
mauled by elements of the Chinese 40th Army, already reported by AFSA to be close to
Korea. Five days later MacArthur's chief of staff, Lieutenant General Ned Almond,
reported that he had seen Chinese POWs being held by a ROK unit. On the first of
November, a Chinese force attacked a U.S. unit for the first time. But Charles
Willoughby, MacArthur's G2, preferred to believe that these encounters represented
isolated PRC volunteers rather than division-strength regular army units confronting UN
troops. 32
AFSA reports continued to document the presence of major Chinese forces on the Yalu,
but the reporting was subtle. AFSA was regarded as a collection and processing agency,
not as a producer of intelligence. There were no dramatic wrap-ups, no peppery
conclusions - just the facts, strung through a flood of intelligence reports. The COMINT
community had almost the only hard information about the status of Chinese forces. 33
Intelligence agencies were beginning to pay attention. The Watch Committee of the
JIIC, which began noting Chinese troop movements as early as June, concluded by
September (probably on the basis of AFSA reporting) that these troops were moving north
rather than to the coastal provinces near Formosa. By mid-October, influenced perhaps by
MacArthur's opinions, the Watch Committee had concluded that, though there was
convincing evidence that startling numbers of Chinese forces were in Manchuria, the time
for intervention had passed - they assessed that the Chinese would not intervene.
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However, encounters with Chinese ground and air forces in late October and early
November caused the committee to take another look. Admiral Arleigh Burke, who
commanded naval forces in the region, was convinced that Chinese intervention was
imminent and brought up the subject twice to Willoughby, who summoned his very large
staff to try to dissuade Burke. 34
MacArthur continued to press ahead with offensive operations to reach the Yalu and
get the boys home by Christmas. But on the snapping cold night of 25 November with
trumpets braying, thousands of Chinese soldiers fell on unsuspecting units of the 8th
Army. The American offensive turned quickly into a defensive, and a defense into a rout.
The American and ROK armies were overwhelmed, and some units were virtually wiped
out. Weeks later the front stabilized near Seoul, and the war settled down to grim trench
warfare for almost three more years.
AFSS and ASA Operations
AFSS operations in Korea continued their harrowing path. The decision in November
to send regular AFSS units occurred just prior to the Chinese invasion. Two locations
were envisioned: one in Sinanju to intercept North Korean targets in the battle zone and a
rear detachment in Pyongyang to intercept related Soviet and Chinese communications.
But even as the two detachments were in the air on their way to Korea on 28 November,
the Chinese had attacked, and Sinanju was not safe. The unit destined for Sinanju was
diverted to Pyongyang, much further south, while the detachment commander was flown
to Sinanju to assume command of the troops on the ground (the Cho detachment) and to
get them to safety farther south. AFSS in Korea operated as Detachment Charlie of 1st
RSM until 1951, when the 15th RSM was activated to control all AFSS Korean
operations. 35 The Cho group made it safely back to Allied lines, and by February of 1951
the front had stabilized just south of Seoul.
ASA tactical units dug in for the winter. ASA manual Morse in tercept efforts in
Korea were having very mode st success. Most intercepted material wasl
p roviding little of tactical value. But sometime in February /
reports began to illter to ASA that UN front-line troops were hearing Chinese voice /
communications. ASAPAC (Advance) sent an investigating officer to IX Corps, and he/
reported that there was a good volume of spoken Chinese interceptable. /
ASA already had some Chinese linguists, but what they needed to exploit this type,4f
nonstereotyped communications was native linguists. &n arrangement wa s made witji a
former Nationalist Chinese general working for the U.S. in Tokyo to begin hiring foriner
Nationalist officers from Formosa. They were enticed to Korea by the. promise of earning
GS-6 pay as Department of the Army civilians, and they were to enjoy officer status while
in Korea. Competition was keen, and by the summer of 1951, Chinese linguists' were
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DF operations - an ASA DF unit in the mountains of Korea
The linguists were formed into Low-Level Voice Intercept (LLVI) teams and were
positioned as close to the front lines as possible. The effort was expanded to include
Korean LLVI, although that part of the program got off to a slower start because of the
difficulty of getting good linguists in a cleared status. Low-level voice quickly became the
prime producer of COMINT in Korea, and the demand for LLVI teams overwhelmed ASA's
ability to provide enough good linguists. The program expanded from one unit, to seven,
to ten, and by the end of the war there were twenty-two LLVI teams, including two teams
dedicated to tactical voice intercept. 36
In September of 1952 the 25th Infantry Division began picking up Chinese telephone
communications from their tactical landline telephones. This was accidental, of course,
and apparently originated from a sound detecting device normally used to indicate the
approach of enemy troops. When the unit moved offline, they passed on the technique to
the relieving 40th Infantry Division. The 40th improved the equipment but did no
analysis. In November, an ASA liaision officer at division headquarters was notified, and
ASA proceeded to develop the technique on other sectors, supporting it with LLVI teams
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consisting of either Korean or Chinese, linguists, depending on wiich type of unit was on
the other side of the line. The Americans had accidentally rediscovered a technique for
gathering intelligence which had originally been dev eloped during} World War I and which
had been a prime producer of tactical information. ' ' : :
These LLVI teams were quite small, consisting only /of an ASA officer* a couple of
enlisted men for analysis, and two or three native linguists. Their value lo front-line
commanders, however, far outran their cost, and LLVl/was hailed as one oT the most
important producers of tactical intelligence during the war.
White Horse Mountain /
As the conflict settled down to unremitting trench/ warfare, highlights were few, and
peace talks gradually replaced warfare in Americaii newspapefs. But the fron^ lines
continued to shift imperceptibly as the two sides bludgeoned each other in a series of
bloody encounters to take high ground. One of those, ihe battle for White Horse Mountain,
illustrated the use ofcOMINT in a tactical situation. /
The action was originally tipped off by
a Chinese Communist
military message that was in the hands of the tac tical comma nd before the battle too*:
place. ASA set up a special | [effort and tactical communications to
report information that might bear on the battle
True to the intelligence prediction, the Chinese launched a massive infantry assault
on American and ROK troops at White Horse on 6 October and persisted until 15 October.
Throughout the battle, LLVI teams kept the American commander informed of the
position and activities of Chinese units. In a precursor to Vietnam, the American units
were able to call artillery fire on Chinese positions on the basis of the LLVI-provided
information. 38 The Chinese suffered nearly 10,000 casualties out of some 23,000
committed to the battle. 39
AFSS Introduces Tactical Warning
Like ASA units, AFSS operations in Korea depended increasingly on intercept of low-
level voice communications, using this for tactical warning. The concept relied on the
Joint Training Directive for Air-Ground Operations published in 1949, which stated that
the primary purpose of radio squadrons mobile for tactical support was to collocate with
the Tactical Air Control Center (TACC) so that direct tactical warning could be supplied.
(This followed World War II COMINT doctrine used effectively by Lieutenant General
Kenney at 5th Air Force.)
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Because of the lack of linguists, AFSS was slow to set up this service in Korea.
However, in the early spring of 1951 AFSS units began intercepting Soviet ground-
controlled intercept (GO) communications, and this spurred Far East Air Force (FEAF)
into requesting AFSS tactical support. Fortunately, AFSS did have some Russian
linguists, and eight of them were on their way to Korea in April to form the first linguist
team. They originally set up a mobile intercept and processing hut at Pyongtaek in
central Korea, and communicated with the TACC by landline. No one in the tactical air
operation was cleared for comint, so it was disguised using a simple substitution code to
identify enemy aircraft and ground checkpoints. Arrangements were made for the TACC
controller to pass relevant COMINT, intermixed with radar plots, to fighter pilots. The
operation was nicknamed "YOKE," and became highly successful because it significantly
expanded the range of control of the TACC and improved the air controllers' ability to
warn pilots of impending threats.
As the front advanced north of Seoul, so did the air control operations. In June of 1951,
the entire air control operation moved forward to a hill four miles northeast of Kimpo
Airport near Seoul. But in August hearability deteriorated, and the operation, including
the TACC and Security Serice operations, migrated by LST to Pyong-Yong-Do island.
Only six miles from enemy lines, T-Y-Do" (as it was called) was in an ideal location. The
site at Kimpo was kept open, and linguists were split between the two sites.
Soon AFSS was finding tactical voice communications in Chinese and Korean as well
as Russian. Two more voice teams were established for the additional languages. The
Korean voice team consisted of the Cho contingent of the Nichols group. The Chinese
team set up shop on the campus of Chosen Christian College in Seoul (today, Yansei
University). AFSS acquired its Chinese linguists in Korea basically the same way that
ASA did - they hired foreign-born linguists. In this case, they did business with one
General Hirota, a former chief of the Japanese army COMINT agency during World War II.
Hirota hired twelve Japanese linguists who were fluent in Chinese.
With so many languages involved, the tactical support operation was unusually
complex. The AFSS facility at Kimpo correlated Chinese early warning voice, Chinese
GCI voice, Soviet GCI voice, Chinese air defense Morse and Korean GCI voice. Each input
was produced by a separate team, and each team was in a different location for security
purposes. 40
In September of 1951 the P-Y-Do operation was closed down and moved back to Kimpo,
and that fall all AFSS operations were consolidated at Chosen Christian. This was the
first time that all components of the operation were collocated, which made correlation of
activity easier. According to one officer involved in the operation, "the present top-heavy
success of the F-86s against MIG-15s dates almost from the day of the inception of the new
integrated voice-CW-YOKE service." 41
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In early 1952 much of the GCI traffic that AFSS had been intercepting began to dry
up, and AFSS became convinced that it had gone to VHF. Moreover, about that time the
Chinese stopped tracking Communist aircraft, and they tracked only "hostiles." These
twin changes spelled potential disaster for AFSS tactical operations. From a practical
standpoint, the lack of tracking would force AFSS to rely almost entirely on intercepting
GCI communications. But since these communications were disappearing, probably to
VHF, that source of information was also drying up. The changes also generated a
security problem, since the positions' of Communist aircraft had been disguised as radar
plots when being passed to the TACC. If there were no more radar position reports,
disguise of the origin of the information would be much more difficult.
Delmar Lang on Cho-Do Island in 1952
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These developments roughly coincided with the arrival of the first batch of school-
trained American Chinese linguists, headed by Lieutenant Delmar "Del" Lang, in mid-
1952. At the time the unit was located in Seoul, where VHP intercept was hardly possible,
while the TACC had moved to Cho-Do Island, near the North Korean harbor of Wonsan!
Information had to be relayed from the AFSS unit to Kimpo and from Kimpo to Cho-Do.
Lang moved the operation to Cho-Do Island and collocated it with the TACC. Tests on
Cho-Do in August of 1952 confirmed that both the Soviets and Chinese were now using
VHF for their GCI control activities.
To solve the security problems and to make sure that the TACC controller got the best
possible support, Lang positioned an AFSS linguist in the TACC in March of 1953, sitting
next to the controller. The linguist had a field phone on his desk, the other end of which
was attached to the output of a receiver at the Security Service intercept unit three-
fourths of a mile away. In an era when no one knew much about tempest (see chapter 5),
such a wireline was regarded as secure simply because it was a landline. 42
Combined with improved hearability, the new lash-up at Cho-Do Island provided the
best support that AFSS mustered during the entire war. In one day, which Lang described
as the "great Korean turkey shoot," American F-86s downed fifteen MIGs without a loss,
even though none of the MIGs was ever seen on radar. The information came, of course,
from the COMINT operation at Cho-Do. A visiting ASA colonel commented that "it was just
like shooting ducks in a rain barrel." It was a model for tactical COMINT operations and
was resurrected by the same Del Lang years later in Vietnam. (See chapter 12.) 43
The Navy
Naval cryptology was a bit player in Korea. The DPRK had no blue-water navy, and it
was so weak that the Inchon invasio n went unopposed from the naval standpoint. The
nav al COMINT unit in the region wag
Bufl Jwas not concerned wjth the small collection of DPRK coastal patrol craft. The
organization concentrated instead almost entirely on the Soviet navy in the Pacific, to
determine what moves, if any, the Soviets would make toward the U.S. presence on the
/Korean peninsula.
The unit was.housed in cramped quarters in a former Japanese artillery training
school, entirely too small and inadequate for the purpose. NSQ found an old Japanese
ammunition storage buildin g about te n miles from] Rehabilitation began in
1951, and in November 1952) |moved to
years
where it remained for many
Most of the NSG support to the war effort came from its afloat detachments.
Originating out of Hawaii, detachments were placed aboard 7th Fleet vessels beginning in
August 1951, and at the end of the war, 7th Fleet had three such units. 4 *
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The AFSA Factor
On the home fr ont, AFSA provided significant help to battlefield commanders.
AFSA's quick work | [ in time to turn the tide at Taegu
appeared to portend the same kind of COMINT efiectaveness that the U.S. had enjoyed
during World War II. But it was not to be. T
In November 1950, with Chinese Communist troops flooding into Nort h Korea, AFSA
turned its attention to Chinese communications.
In 1952 the painfully slow progress on traffic analysis of ChinWe army nets finally! \
began to bear fruit. There were indications through traffic analysis that the 46th Army: \
was moving northward. The army eventually arrived in Manchuria and crossed the 1 1
border into Korea. As it did so, AFSA began exploiting People's Volunteer Army (PVAj \
nets from a traffic analytic standpoint, and it achieved a level of competence on PVA net|;
that allowed extremely accurate order of battle determinations, unavailable through any?
other intelligence source. Through traffic analysis AFSA noted the buildup of PVA units/
on the eastern front, and this allowed 8th Army to reinforce its right side prior to a majo^
PVA assault on 15 July 1953. 48 (I
Relations with ROKCOMSEC and COMINT
COMSEC assistance to ROK forces began almost as early as COMINT collaboration. |n
September 1950 ASA was asked to furnish low-level cryptographic assistance Vor use $y.
the ROK army. After conferring with AFSA, ASA shipped some strip ciphers and. Playfcfir
squares. It was soon found, however, that these very time-intensive systems woii|d not jbe
fast enough, and in 1953 ASA provided the first electromechanical cipher equipment, $ie
BACCHUS system. Laterin the year ASA also released the DIANA one- time-pad systeW 9 !
Cryptologic cooperation with the ROK COMINT organizations continued throughout
the war. USAFSS continued its relationship with the Cho group, while ASA continued to
do business with the Kim group. In November 1951 ASAPAC proposed the consolidation
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of the two efforts, but AFSS firmly rejected the overture. This was probably based on Air
Force fear that ASA would dominate the relationship and get back into the business of
copying North Korean air targets, but this may also have been based on the very realistic
appraisal that the animosity between Kim and Cho was unbridgeable. 50
The situ ation continued unchanged, and late the next year an official for the newly
created NSA/ ' \ :
By charter (NSCID 5), CIA had control of all foreign intelligence relationships. But
the "battlefield marriage" between the American and South Korean COMINT organizations
represented a significant exception to the general rule. Korea wasJCS turf, and military
commanders were cool to CIA participation in their arena.
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t :
Korea - An Assessment
The Korean War occurred during a period of struggle in the cryptologic community. It
began a year after the formation of AFSA and concluded after the AFSA ship had been
finally scuttled in favor, of a new vessel, the National Security Agency. Tlie demands of
war highlighted the fissures in the structure, and those fissures in turn made prosecution
of the war more difficult. AFSA wrestled with the SCAs over control of intercept positions
and targets throughout its existence, and many of those battles were related to the war
effort. The Brownell Committee was convened in part because of complaints by
organizations outside the Department of Defense over degraded cryptologic sbpport
resulting from the war. The committee stressed in its final report that the cryptologic
community had been shown deficient in its effort during the war. NSA replaced &FSA
partly because of what was happening (or not happening) in Korea. | 1
But after forty years the picture does not look quite so bleak. Actually, kFSA and the
SCAs provided good support to the war effort. Although AFSA (along with everyone Wise)
was looking the other way when the war started, it did a remarkable aiout-face,! and
within a month it was producing large volumes of decrypted information from Nbrth
Korean communications. Its accomplishments during the battle f or the Pusan perimeter,
{ and using ithe
information to support tactical commanders, were considerable and important. The
reporting program, although hampered by restrictions on AFSA's production! of
"intelligence" as opposed to "intelligence information," was farsighted and effective.
AFSA, almost alone among intelligence agencies, foresaw the Chinese intervention. The
development of Chinese and Korean order of battle owed much to AFSA's high-powered
traffic analytic effort.
After a slow start occasioned by lack of mobility, tactical resources, linguists, an|l
working aids, ASA and USAFSS put together highly credible battlefield COMINT
organizations. ASA's LLVI program produced more valuable information for ground
commanders than any other source. AFSS put together a system for warnin g, fighter pilots
which was partly responsible for the much-ballyhooed kill ratio in that war. 1
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AFSA's quick start was not sustained. Beginning in July of 1951, the North Koreans
began a total changeover of their communications procedures^
In the first month of the war, AFSA read more than one third of all North Korean
cipher messages received , and by December AFSA was reading more than 90 percent. / ""
. | The new North Korean security
measures were evidently inspired by the Soviet Union, whose communications had in 1948
undergone a similar transformation in the face of possible American and British
exploitation efforts. (See chapter 4.) It was accompanied by a decline in North Korean
radio messages incident to the beginnings of static trench warfare roughly at the 38th
Parallel, which gave the enemy a chance to divert radio communications to landline.
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Security was a problem in Korea, as it has been during all wars. Occasional press
releases exposed COMINT support to battlefield commanders. The release of information
about AFSS exploitation of GCI communications became so serious that in October 1951
Detachment 3 of 1st RSM took the extraordinary step of suspending operations for a few
days until they got the attention of key officers in 5th Air Force. 56 The employment of
tactical GCI voice and tracking information in the air war caused AFSS to devise new
measures to cover the information, and it set a precedent for use of similar information
during the war in Vietnam.
When NSA was created in November 1952, immediate steps were taken to sort out the
effort in Korea. NSA's recommendations amounted.to a classic "lessons learned" about
war. Most pressing was a program which would allow the use of indigenous personnel
with native language capability. Almost as urgent was the need to sort out the tangled
relationships with the various ROK COMINT efforts. It would also be necessary to increase
NSA representation in the field and to expand existing field offices with technical experts
assisting the SCAs. Finally there was a call to develop new special identification
techniques th at would allow NSA and the SCAs to track target transmitters [
, NSA sponsored these themes for years, until they
became tantamount to COMINT doctrine on warfighting.
One beneficial effect of the Korean conflict was to begin a rapid rise in cryptologic
resources. In July 1950 USCIB recommended to the National Security Council that
COMINT receive a hiring jolt. The NSC approved this on 27 July in a meeting attended by
the president himself. 58
Korea was America's first stalemated war, and recriminations resounded for years
later. But even an acerbic CIA critic of the cryptologic community had to admit that
"COMINT remained the principal source of intelligence for threat until 27 July 1953, when
the armistice was signed at Panmunjom." 59
Notes
1. Rowlett interview, OH 14-81.
2. Sinkov interview, OH 2-79; oral history interview with Herbert L. Conley, 5 March 1984, by Robert D. Farley,
NSA OH 1-84.
3. See both Burns, Origins, and Howe, "Narrative."
4. William L. O'Neill, American High: The Years ofConfidence, 1945-1960 (New York: Free Press, 1988.)
5. See Burns. Origins, 65.
6. CCH Series V.F.5.1.
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7. Howe, "Narrative." / /
8. Burns, Origins, 70-71. ill
■■ 1 i
9. Howe, "Narrative." | |
/ / \
10. Burns, Origins, 75-77; "Report to the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense by a Special Committee
Appomted Pursuant to Letter of 28 December 1951 [BtowneU Report]," in CCH Series V.F.7.13; NSA Archives,
ACC 26350, CBSK 32; "Analysis of AFS£ Effortln the Korean Action," unpublished draft, USAFSS, n.d., in CCH
Series V.M.4.I.; A Reference Guide tj> Selected Historical Documents Relating to the National Security
Agency/Central Secruity Service, 1931-1985, Source Documents in Cryptologic History, V. I (Ft Meade: NSA
1986), 36, 38. ; j
1.1. Wenger comments on Howe draA history ii CCH Series V.A.13.
12. Burns, Origins, 59-96. •
13. Burns, Origins, 89;
10684, CBRI 52.
'Consumer; Liaison Units, 1949-1957," in NSA/CSS Archives ACC
14. Howe, "Narrative"; "JCEC/Memo for Information No! 1, Charters," in CCH Series V.G.2.; BrowneU Report.
15. BrowneU Report.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid. See also Howe "Narrative"; Burns, 107-108.
18. An excellent account^ the diplomatic background to the invasion of Korea can be found in Clay Blair, The
ForgottenWar: America/in Korea, 1950-1963 (New York: Times Books, 1987); and Joseph Goulden, Korea: The
Untold Story of the War (New York: Times Books, 1982). \
19. Seel
JThe U.S. COMINT Effort during the; Korean Conflict - June 1950-August 1953," pub. on
6 Jan. 1954, an unpublished manuscript in CCH collection, series V.M.1.1. See also Howe, "COMINT
Production ..." and The *BrowneII Committee Report', 13 Jube 1952, in CCH series VI.C.1.3.
20. [AFSA 235] no title [report on significant activity conne cted w ith the entry of Chinese Communists into the
Korean conflict], 25 March 1952, in CCH Series V.M.7.I.; an d] | The U.S. COMINT Effort. ..."
21. William L. O'Neill, American High: The Years of Confidence, 1945-1960.
22. Howe, "COMINT Production . . .»; Dick Scobey (NSA), draft study of ROK SIGINT Effort, no date, in CCH
series V.M.6.I.; Assistant Chief of Staff, G2, "COMINT Operations of the Army Security Agency during the
Korean Conflict, June 1950-December 1953," in CCH Series V.M.2.1.
23. Blair, Forgotten War, Ch. 2-4.
24. Interview Youri P. Kim, 22 February 1982, by Robert D. Farley, OH 2-82, NSA.
25. Hq USAFSS, "Analysis of AFSS Effort in the Korean Action," unpublished draft manuscript in CCH series
V.M.4.1.
26. Summaries of Project WILLY can be found in the following sources: Hqs USAFSS, "Analysis of AFSS
Effort . . .," Dick Scobey, "Draft Study of ROK SIGINT Effort"; ["Hop" Harriger], "A Historical Study of the Air
Force Security Service and Korea, June 1950-October 1952," on file at Hqs AIA in San Antonio.
27. Manuscript entitled "SIGINT in the Defense of the Pusan Perimeter: Korea, 1950," (SC) in CCH series
V.M.1.10. See also Clay Blair, TheForgotten War, 240.
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28. Guy Vanderpool, "COMINT and the PRC Intervention in the ry>rean War," paper avaUable in CCH.
29. Roy E. Appleman, Disaster in Korea: The Chinese Confront MaiArthur (College Station, Texas: Texas A and
M Press, 1989).
30. Blair, Forgotten War, 350.
31. [Drake, Robert, and others] "The COMINT Role in the Korean War)? unpublished manuscript in CCH series
V.M.1.9. See also Howe, "COMINT Production in the Korean War . . .»; oial history interview Milton Zaslow, 14
May 1993 by Charles Baker and Guy Vanderpool, NSA OH 17-93; oral, history interview Robert Drake, 5
December 1985 by Robert D. Farley and Tom Johnson, NSA OH 18-85; oral history interview Samuel S. K. Hong,
9 December 1986 by Robert D. Farley, NSA OH 40-86.
32. Blair, Forgotten War, 375-78.
33. Zaslow interview; Drake interview.
34. Department of the Army G2, "Indications of Chinese Communist Intentions to Intervene in Korea," 7 May
1954, in CCH series V.M.7.4.; oral history interview Admiral Arleigh Burke, 9 December 1981, by Robert D
Farley and Henry F. Schorreck, NSA OH 13-81.
35. "Analysis of AFSS Effort . . ."; George Howe, "COMINT Production in the Korean kr. . . .»
36. Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, "COMINT Operations . . . » contains the best summary \,fLLVI operations.
37. See Assistant Chief of Staff, "COMINT Operations . . . ," 56-57.
38. Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, "COMINT Operations . . . ." See also oral history interview
April 1982 by Robert Farley, NSA Oral History 9-82, 122.
24
39. For a description of the action, see Walter G. Hermes, Truce Tent and Fighting Front, United States Army in
the Korean War (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, United States Army, 1966), 303-08.
40. Summaries of AFSS tactical operations can be found in the following: USAFSS, "Analysis of AFSS Effort in
the Korean Action," unpublished draft in CCH Series V.M.2.I.; NSA, "Review of U.S. Cryptologic Effort 1952-
54," in CCH series VI EE.1.3/, and [Hop HarrigerJ "A Historical Study. ...» The latter document contains the
fullest explanation of the Yoke operation.
41. [Hop Harriger] "A Historical Study. . . 72.
42. The new operation is described in USAFSS, "Analysis of AFSS Effort . . ."; "Historical Data Report for the
6920 SG, 1 January 1953,"; interview with Delmar Lang [undated], in CCH Series VI, AFSS section; and Major
Chancel T. French, "Deadly Advantage: Signals Intelligence in Combat, V. II," Air University Research Report
#AU-ARI-84-l,1984.
43. French, "Deadly Advantage . . oral history interview Col (USA, Ret.) Russell H. Horton, 14 March 1982 by
Robert D. Farley, NSAOral History 6-82.
44. U.S. Naval Security Group, "U.S. Naval Communications Supplementary Activities in the Korean Conflict,
June 1950-August 1953," in CCH Series V.H.3.1.
45. Richard Chun, unpublished manuscript in CCH Series V.M.1.1 1.
46. Drake and others, "The COMINT Role in the Korean War."
47. Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, "COMINT Operations. . . ."
48. [Drake and others] "The COMINT Role in the Korean War."
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49. "U.S. Cryptographic Assistance and COMINT Collaboration with the ROK," 24 February 1955, in CCH
Series V.M.6.5,
50. File of memos related to the history of AFSA/NSA communications center, in CCH Series VI.H.1.2.
51. NSA, "Study of the COMINT Situation in Korea," undated memo (probably December 1952) in CCH Series
V.M.I .14.
52. "Agreement on COMINT activities between the U.S. and the Republic of Korea, 1956 " in CCH Series
V.M.6.3.
53. Brownell Committee Report, G-l-G-2; see also Mary E. Holub, Joyce M. Horns and SSgt Kay B. Grice, "A
Chronology of Significant Events in the History of Electronic Security Command, 1948-1988," 1 March 1990, in
CCH Series X.J.6.
54. CCH Series VI.A. 1 .3.
55. "Study of the COMINT Situation in Korea."
56. "Analysis of AFSS Effort in the Korean Action."
57. "Study of the COMINT Situation in Korea."
58. USCIB memorandum, 20 July 1950, and NSC memorandum dated 27 July, in Harry S. Truman Library,
Independence, Missouri (contained in CCH Series XVI).
59;
The History of SIGINT in the Central Intelligence Agency, 1947-1970," October 1971, V.
I., 86 in CIA history collection, Ames Building, Rosslyn, Virginia.
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Chapter 3
Cryptology under New Management
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There is something about cryptologic work that gets into the hide
Ralph Canine, 1968
NSA began life under a pall. The Brownell Committee ha!d declared its predecessor to
have been a failure. Outside the cryptologic community ther e was a common fesl ing that
COMINT was broken and in serious need of repair. According tc Lho was
appointed by Allen Dulles to ride herd on the cryptologic effort,
The early 1950s were the dark ages for communications intelligence. Intelligence officers who
had been accustomed to providing information riot only on the capabilities but also on the
intentions of the enemy during World War II were reduced to providing the government with
estimates based on frail fragments of information rather than factual foreknowledge.
I _x
The creation of NSA was an attempt to address the problems of cryptology as the
Brownell Committee saw them. (As we saw in the section on Korea, that perception was
not 100 percent accurate.) That is, it attempted to institute a firm control mechanism that
would unify the system and create an organization which was, in and of itself, responsible
for getting the job done. No longer would consumers have to go to four different
organizations to get answers or to fix blame for the lack of answers. It did not give the
organization resources, improve its personnel situation, or give it adequate working space.
When NSA began life, it simply inherited its resources from its predecessor. It got the
AFSA billets and the people in them, the AFSA spaces at Arlington Hall, and the AFSA
rooms at the Naval Security Station. And it inherited an idea, that unification worked
better than division. The difficulty was in trying to implement the solutions that the
Truman Memorandum imposed. AFSA, despite its failings, had been a step in the right
direction. NSA now had to take the next step.
To the AFSA population, the name change must have seemed more for appearance
than for any practical value. There was no immediate change in their condition. They
stayed where they were - if they were COMINTers, they remained at Arlington Hall, and if
they were COMSECers, they stayed at Nebraska Avenue. Lieutenant General Canine, who
had replaced Admiral Stone as AFSA director, stayed on as director of NSA. When Canine
first gathered the NSA work force together on 25 November 1952, he alluded to the
conflicts which had preceded the establishment of NSA, but they must have seemed
remote to those who listened. It looked like business as usual.
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Lieutenant General Ralph J. Canine went to bat for the new organization at a time when ita
existence was challenged and its longevity was far from certain.
Canine and the New Organization
But it was not to be business as usual, largely because of the personality of the first
director. Lieutenant General Ralph Canine, who dominated early NSA policies and
stamped his character on the Agency, had been a line Army officer with no intelligence
experience until he became deputy assistant chief of staff for army intelligence in 1949.
Prior to that he had been an artillery officer, with wide experience in combat (both world
wars, serving under Patton in World War II) as well as logistics. Although he brought no
technical education to cryptology, he exerted his influence through a hands-on
management style. He was forceful and determined and tenaciously enforced the
Brownell recommendations on the reluctant SCAs. His whimsical personality produced
legions of "Canine stories," which simply embellished lis reputation as a maverick.
Collins proclaimed him a "fortunate choice," and said that "he . . . raised the National
Security Agency from a second-rate to a first-rate organization." 2 Canine was no diplomat,
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and he might have failed had he come along ten years later. In 1952, however, he was the
right man for the job.
One of the first things Canine did was to get rid of the triumvirate of service deputies
who, under AFSA, had represented their own service interests rather than the interests of
the central organization. He replaced them with a single vice-director, and named Joseph
Wenger to fill the position. But Wenger was probably not very happy as the vice-director.
By all contemporary accounts, Canine served as his own vice-director. He tended to make
all key decisions himself. He had no patience with long vertical lines of control, and when
he wanted an answer, he went directly to the person involved. He relied on his staff to
keep others in the chain of command informed of hig comings and goings but did not feel
bound, himself, to use the chain. The system smacked of paternalism, and one of Canine's
subordinates once said, "Whenever I see him nowadays, I expect him to pat me on the
head." 3
Canine organized NSA rather like AFSA had been structured, with Production,
COMSEC, and R&D being the major divisions. But he broke Administration into its
component pieces (security, personnel, training, logistics, and plans and policy) and placed
them on his "special staff," a classically army way of doing things. The office designation
system was a trigraph, NSA followed by a dinome: for instance, NSA-02 was the Office of
Operations.
In February 1953 Canine changed Operations to Production, or NSA-06. Production
was structured much like a factory, in which the parts of the cryptologic process were
organized functionally rather than geographically. The major divisions within Production
were Collection (NSA-60), Analysis (NSA-70), Machine Processing (NSA-80), and
Exploitation (NSA-90). Although NSA has since changed over to a more geographical
approach, the original organization more closely corresponded to how cryptologists viewed
their profession at the time - as part of a complex process suitable primarily for highly
skilled factory technicians. What made cryptology different from other intelligence
disciplines was both the intricate technical challenge and the assembly-line processing
system. It also represented NSA's way of conceptualizing the process of intelligence - as
underlying data revealed through mathematical attack rather than as cognitive insight
arrived at through inspiration. 4
The Early Work Force
The Korean War had ushered in a period of explosive growth in the cryptologic
population. This was followed by a long period of fairly steady personnel growth, as Table
1 shows.
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Table 1
Cryptologic Population, 1949- 1960 5
Year AFSA NSA Totals (includes SCAs)
10,745
33,010
50,550
72,560
Dec 1949 4,139
Dec 1952 8,760
Nov 1956 10,380
Nov 1960 12,120
The work force in 1952 was double what it had been under AFSA, but it was\still
smaller than either ASA or USAPSS and larger only than NSG.
SI
The Hoover Commission, which was probably
the most extensive investigation of the federal bureaucracy ever, estimated that
cryptologic costs amounted to about half a billion dollars. 7
In the early days, the work force was about one-third military and two-thirds civilian.
A snapshot of NSA's work force in 1956 (Table 2) showed most of the population working in
Production,
Pay tables were not quite as generous in those days, as Table 3 clearly shows. A grade
5 employee (the most numerous group of NSA employees) started out making $3,410,
which smacks of impoverishment. But with houses costing below $10,000, and frequently
below $5,000, employees may have been just as well off in real terms then.
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\ ^Table 2
NSA's Work Fprce by Organization, 1956
Element
Production
R&D
COMSEC
Communications
Training
Directorate,
admin, overseas
Totals
Table 3
Pay grade allocations and salary (basic level) 1962 and 1993 8
Grade Salary 1952 1993\ Grade Alloc 1952 1993
1
$2,500
$11,90^
;p.2%)
;o%)
2
2,750
13,382;
;6 ? 7)
:o.o7)
3
2,950
14,603\
[635)
[0.5)
4
3,175
16,393 \
13^
0.7)
5
3,410
18,340 \
[26) \
:i.9)
6
• 3,795
20,443 \
\
:i.6)
7
4,205
22,717 \
[18) \
:4.9)
8
4,620
25,259 \
[1-5) \
l)
9
5,060
27,789
[12)
[6.8)
10
. 5,500
30,603
[0.5)
[0.2)
11
5,940
33,623
[7)
[12.1)
12
7,040
40,298
[4)
[22.1)
13
8,360
47,920
[2)
(26)
14
9,600
56,627
(0.8)
(11.5)
15
10,800
66,609
(0.6)
(6)
16
12,000
(.02)
17
13,000
(.02)
2)
18
14,800
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Included in Table 3 are the grade allocations in 1952 compared with those in 1993.
This is a striking illustration of grade creep - more of a gallop than a creep. In 1952 the
average grade was 6.7, while in 1993 it was 11.7, a grade inflation averaging fully five
General Schedule grades over a period of forty-one years. This followed the trends in the
general federal work force: in 1952, the average grade was GS-5.5, while in 1993 it was
GS-9.
The conditions under which NSA employees labored were not much different from the
AFSA days. Offices were badly overcrowded, especially at Arlington Hall. In 1954
approximately 30 percent of the work force worked the evening shift to relieve
overcrowding on days. Air conditioning in the Washington area was still virtually
unknown, and the NSA hot weather policy permitted relief from work only when
conditions became fairly unbearable, as the temperature versus humidity chart (Table 4)
shows. On really hot days the man whirling the hygrometer was the most popular person
at the station.
Table 4
NSA Employees Could be Released When
Temperature reached And humidity reached
95 55
96 52
97 49
98 .45
99 42
100 38
There was a view, widely held in 1952, that the expertise of the civilian work force had
declined since 1945. This was to some extent true. Not only had ASA and NSG lost some
of their best minds at the end of the war, but the structure of the central organization
created built-in problems for the civilian promotion system. The Navy had always run its
cryptologic service with military officers, while the Army, believing that military officers
rotated too frequently, had let its civilian work force run the cryptologic effort. By 1949,
when AFSA was formed, NSG had a number of very senior officers involved in the
business, and many of those people transferred into AFSA. Admiral Stone placed them in
the key leadership positions, and the Army civilians were often shunted aside. Moreover,
Stone took no steps to create a senior civilian work force, and when he departed in favor of
Canine, there were no civilians above grade 15.
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In 1953 a committee chaired by H. P. Robertson of California Institute of Technology
(more commonly referred to simply as Cal Tech; see p. 227) looked at NSA's future and
concluded that there was no future if the Agency was unable to obtain and retain
outstanding civilians in various technical fields. This, according to Robertson, would
require the establishment of a cryptologic career management program within NSA, with
regular progression through the grade ranks and supergrade promotions to the top
performers. The Robertson Committee also concluded that the services would have to
improve their own cryptologic career advancement programs to attract and retain good
uniformed people to COMINT. Robertson noted the lack of such a program in the Army and
the lack of a stateside rotational base. (At the time, fully 66 percent of all ASAers were
overseas.) 9
Canine met this problem head-on. Soon after the Robertson Report was released, he
directed the personnel office to begin working on a cryptologic career system, with
technical specialties and a system of regular advancement. This work was well under way
by early 1954 and eventually led to the structuring of the current cryptologic career
program for civilians. Canine was credited personally with getting NSA's first three
supergrades: William Friedman, Abraham Sinkov, and Solomon Kullback. (Frank
Rowlett, hired in 1930 with Sinkov and Kullback, had joined CIA and so was not on the
list.) Even more significant, in 1953 he obtained for NSA the authority to hire under the
so-called Civil Service Rule Schedule A, which permitted NSA to hire without obtaining
permission from the Civil Service Commission. Rather than having NSA applicants take
the standard Civil Service test and then having a board interview the top three scorers
NSA devised its own peculiar aptitude tests, and hired without outside interference. 10
Under Canine, NSA moved in many directions at once to strengthen its civilian work
force. The director got NSA a slot at the National War College in 1953, and Louis Tordella
was the first appointment, Abraham Sinkov the second. 11 The Training Division initiated
a presupervisory training program, which was curtailed in 1955 in favor of an intern
training program oriented more toward technical education. 12 NSA began local recruiting
in the Baltimore and Washington areas by 1954. 13
Fielding the Field Offices
Canine moved very aggressively to establish field offices. Under Stone, AFSA had had
no field organization, and the censorial AFSAC appeared to guarantee continuation of the
situation. But as soon as he became AFSA director, Canine made an end-run around
AFSAC. On a trip to the Far East in September of 1951, he got the concurrence of the
theater commander for an AFSA field office and returned to Washington with a fait
accompli. Early objections by NSG were muffled when Canine named Captain Wesley A.
("Ham") Wright, one of the most senior naval cryptologists, to head the newly formed
AFSA Far East office in Tokyo. By the time AFSAC got around to considering this
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surreptitious move in January of 1952, the office already existed (official date: 1 January
1952) with Wright and a staff of six. When APSAC approved a formal charter, it stripped
Wright of any direct control over SCA field operations, but Canine had the nucleus of a
field organization and awaited only the creation of NSA to, augment the authorities of the
chief.
In Europe, Canine began by sending a top civilian, Hugh Erskine, on a survey trip, the
result of which, as in the Far East, was theater command concurrence with an APSA
branch office. This time Canine submitted his plan to AFSAC before officially
establishing the office. AFSAC approved, and Erskine began work formally on 1
September 1952 in offices in the I.G. Farben building in Frankfurt. 14 NSAEUR competed
for a time with an office titled NSAUK (NSA United Kingdom), located in London, and the
two shared responsibility for some of the continental COMINT functions - for instance,
This lasted until 1956, when NSAUK was abruptly
disestablished.
When CINCEUR shifted to Paris in 1954, NSAEUR stayed in Frankfurt but finally
shifted to Car np des Loges, outside Paris, in 1963. While the policy and liaison functions
resided there,
1 5
Once NSA was officially established, Canine moved swiftly to create more field offices.
NSA Alaska (NSAAL) was created in July 1953, NSAUK on 26 August 1953, and
NSAPAC, established to advise CINCPAC, on 16 August 1954. He also created at home
an office to monitor field operations. 16
Backed by the authority of NSCID 9 (the predecessor of the present-day NSCID 6),
Canine imposed on the reluctant SCAs a group of field offices that had basically the same
power as he himself within their geographic spheres. They had two functions - liaison
with theater commanders and technical control of the theater COMINT system. Their main
reason for existence was to impose order on the chaotic growth of the field sites, and they
established large and active technical staffs which worked directly with the sites. NSA
field offices could task SCA field sites directly (although they customarily did not do so).
NSA's theater chiefs strove to create a cooperative atmosphere with the SCAs, but
everyone involved recognized the implied threat that they represented as personal
emissaries of the feared Canine. The SCA field chiefs fought this "encroachment" into
their territory with every resource at their disposal. 17
During and after World War II, American military organization in the Atlantic and
Pacific theaters contained inherent turf conflicts. In Europe, for instance, the main power
resided with CINCEUR (originally in Frankfurt), but there was also a military
organization in Great Britain that competed with it for power. In the Pacific the
competition between CINC Far East (MacArthur) and CINCPAC (Nimitz) was even more
stark. And so it was with NSA organizations. In Europe, the latent competition between
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the NSA offices in Gnkt Britain and Germany was resolved in 1956, but in ihe Far^ast
the competition between the offices in Tokyo and Hawaii continued for manV years.
Civilians in the Trenches - the Civop Program
In the early 1950s ijfSA turned to the problem of field site collection. Military! operator
turnover was high, some years as high as 85 percent. The long-range expansion of
intercept positions set by JCS during the Korean War appeared to be a dead letterlunless a
stable manpower pool jcould be established. NSA liked what it had seen of the GCHQ
program of hiring civilian operators because of the exceptionally long retention rkes and
NSA was also aware that CIA was hiring civilian operators for
""Negotiations were begun with ASA, and in 1954 an agreement
four
NSA
Was hammered out whiVh wnnld sW with a , nnol of on* h undred HviHan on R r fl f.nrg k
ASA field sites " "
would recruit ana train tne operators, who would be under ike control ol the fie/d site
commander. For the initial group, rotation at all four bases was set at two years, and the
grade ranges for the program were 5 through 11. The NSA planning group waxed a little
poetic, formulating long-range plans for thousands of operators and an eventual NSA field
site of its own.
The trial group was duly recruited, trained, and deployed. But even as things were
moving ahead, the services' attitudes were beginning to cool. NSA promised to recruit
only operators who had retired from service, but ASA and USAFSS foresaw keen
competition for their first-term operators contemplating better salaries doing the same job
for NSA. By 1957 the services had turned against the program, and it was quietly
discontinued. It had long-lasting beneficial results, however. It yielded, in later years, a
cadre of experienced civilian operators who performed well in crisis after crisis. 18
COMINT Reporting in Transition
The reporting legacy of World War II was translations. ASA and NSG issued
thousands of translations per month, a reflection of the huge volume of readable traffic.
Once the cryptanalyst had finished his or her job, and the translator had put the message
into readable English, the verbatim transcript was released to either G2 or the theater
commander (in the case of the Army) or Office of Naval Intelligence or the appropriate
naval commander (in the case of the Navy). The mechanism for this was to hand the
information in raw form to an intelligence analyst collocated with the cryptologic
organization. Traffic analytic information was also passed in bulk to the appropriate
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intelligence organization, which would put it into readable intelligence. In other words,
the COMINT factory simply passed raw information to the organization, which would itself
put it in context.
The postwar cryptologic community continued to produce primarily translations,
accompanied by all the COM INT technical information
necessary for the service intelligence analyst to analyze it.
NSA was not supposed to analyze. The information (it could not be dignified with the term
"report") lacked a serialization, resembling the modern system. [ ~
AFSA began to evolve a similar system. Releases tended more and more toward! I
reporting rather than translations ^ ~\ Reports were morejf
formal and had wider distribution. AFSA dev ised its own primit ive serial ization systemi!
an example would be
matter
followed by a date.
was the subjecif
1950 by that section. But reports still contained]
?.nd 13-50 indicated this was the thi rteenth report produced iiff
£nd other\sorts of technical
data later prohibited i n comint Reporting, and nar rative portions, were oftbnVery heavy on
discussion of details of| J^er than on Vgher-leve^l information
like unit movements. The distribution was stilKylyy Iimited ^y modWh standard!
Collocated organizations (ASA, USAFSS, and NSG r'eple sentatives, for exkmple) decide^
who in their services should see the information and. made further distribution from
there. 20 \ \ \ !(
Early NSA reporting was more formal still;
Distribution was broader as NSA ceased to rely on the SCA arid service iAt£lligenf:e/
collocated liaison offices to distribute further. Reports, in 1^ still W^ned fn
I \had fina lly been expunged. There ivas sijM mufeh 1 /
information |_ | but analytical .conclusions were novh
separated into a "Comments" section at the end of the report. 21 Lat^r in\lS&3 N^A/
excluded "COMINT technical data" from product reports completely akd formed hU
Operational Management Control Group to enforce discipline. Collateral information
could be used when necessary. 22
The COMINT reporter was often bedeviled by the same probleihs then as today
Periodically NSA organizations would chastise reporters for overusing qualifiers like
"possibly" and "probably." A 1953 memo found NSA reporting "generally so cluttered
with qualifying expressions as to virtually preclude their use by a consumer
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IRA
The National Security Agency
was a term shop. 24
In 1955 the Hoover Commission declared that NSA, while producing some very
valuable information, was not an official member of the intelligence community. But the
commission undercut this general statement by noting that the volume of COMINT was so
huge that it could never all be turned over to consumers, and by the very act of selecting
individual pieces for dissemination, NSA made analytic judgments about value and
applicability. 25
This trend was to continue and intensify. Key NSA executives knew that the
organization had to move away from translations and into true intelligence reporting.
Various sources of COMINT had to be synthesized, and the results must be packaged into a
meaningful explanation of the situation. If possible, the reporter should make comments
as to meaning and, on occasion, should make conclusions based on COMINT. This was a
higher level of analysis than the rest of the intelligence community foresaw for NSA, and
it would get the organization into trouble with consumers who resented what they
regarded as turf encroachment. But it was the wave of the future.
NSA Training - The Early Years
Training had been the "bastard child" of AFSA. Originally the training school had
been a section of the personnel office, a way station for new and uncleared personnel. New
recruits were given unclassified Army traffic analysis and communications manuals to
read until their clearances came through. The training was good - many of the manuals
were written by Friedman himself - but the way AFSA treated the problem was all wrong.
The staff was miniscule, facilities practically nonexistent, and the function was almost
totally ignored. The real training concept was on-the-job training in the duty section.
Almost all operations training was conducted in Production, with little centralized control
and practically no classroom instruction. There was a training staff that tried to
coordinate all this,. but it did not work in the same organization as the cryptologic school,
which was still part of personnel. 28
When the Korean War began, the training school was still in languid decay, with one
hundred uncleared recruits reading musty traffic analysis manuals in the training spaces
at Nebraska Avenue, supervised by a staff of six people. By the end of the year all was
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chaos. There were 1,100 trainees jammed into the same spaces, still with a staff of 6.
Canine was aware of the problem, and AFSA went to work to improve the situation. In
April of 1951 the school was moved to larger quarters at 1436 U Street, N.W., designated
Tempo R. In June 1954 the school moved to another World War II building - Tempo X -
located on the north side of East Capitol Street, in the area that is now part of the RFK
Stadium parking lot. When, in the mid-1950s, NSA moved to Fort Meade, the training
school moved to a former hospital a couple of miles from the main NSA complex.
Canine later separated training from the Office of Personnel and elevated it to the
level of Office of Training. Its chief was named commandant of the NSA School. Canine
was also a proponent of management training, which was begun in 1952, and he placed the
first NSA students in service war colleges in 1953.
AFSA also began paying more attention to formal classroom instruction. Instead of
the "sit in the corner and read a book" approach, it began offering a selection of classroom
traffic analysis, cryptanalysis, mathematics, language, and technical training. By 1952
the school was offering training (at some level, at least) in eighteen different languages.
Secretaries got instruction in clerical and stenographic skills, and there was a four-week
teletype operators course for those assigned to communications. There was also a one-
week indoctrination course for all new hires, with follow-on instruction for certain
specialties. 27 By mid-1952 AFSA was also offering three levels of management training -
junior (presupervisory), supervisor, and executive. Classes were very small, but at least a
rudimentary program existed.
NSA also began using education as inducement. Begun under AFSA, the College
Contract Program began with a contract with George Washington University and
amounted to NSA payment of tuition to qualifiers. Classes were held at Arlington Hall,
Nebraska Avenue in the District, and at Thomas Jefferson Junior High School in Virginia.'
There was also a program for graduate students and, for a select few,, a fellowship program
which offered full-time study away from NSA.
NSA's role in broader cryptologic training within the services was less certain. Both
AFSA and NSA enjoyed a theoretical technical control of cryptologic standards, which
included training, but AFSA never exercised its review function. An early AFSA proposal
to create a consolidated cryptologic training school was scuttled by Brigadier General Roy
Lynn, an AFSA deputy director, who was concerned about retaining USAF Security
Service independence.
After 1952, things began to change as NSA became active in reviewing SCA
cryptologic courses. The Agency was especially active in providing technical assistance for
language training and at one time took responsibility for all language training beyond the
basic level. It did not, however, try to take on COMSEC training, preferring to leave that to
the SCAs.
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Canine continued to strengthen the organizational position of the training function.
As it migrated up from branch to division level, it took on added responsibilities and
acquired more resources. The people who were involved in training in those early days
were first rate - Lambros D. Callimahos (a close protege of Friedman) and Navy captain
Thomas "Tommy" Dyer (one of the Navy's great pioneers in codebreaking) were especially
notable examples. William Friedman, who had personally built the Army's cryptanalytic
system, spent much of his career as a teacher and authored many textbooks on
cryptanalysis. With such talent and influence, it was only a matter of time before NSA's
training system became a model.
Setting Up Security
Security was one area with which Canine had experience, and he tackled it very early.
Under AFSA, perimeter guards at Arlington Hall and Nebraska Avenue had been
uncleared. Interior guard duty was pulled on a rotating basis by reluctant uniformed
cryptologists, each division taking its turn for a month at a time. Canine eliminated the
interior guard duty in early 1952 by bringing in cleared, uniformed security police. Later
he decided to add some prestige to the NSA guard force and convinced the Navy to give up
a detachment of Marine guards to begin guarding the new temporary NSA facilities at
Fort Meade in 1955. Normally reserved for embassy duty, the Marine guard detachment
became a fixture and source of pride at NSA for many years. 28
Given the size of the cryptologic complex in Washington, some sort of universal
personnel identification system became necessary. The Army appears to have begun using
personnel badges during World War II. Their badges in those days were round metal tabs
with a picture overlayed with plastic - fully cleared people had red badges, opposite the
system of today. After a costly experiment with glass badges, AFSA settled on a plastic
badge. Color coding identified organization, with seven colors total. In 1956 the
organizational affiliation began to fade as NSA reduced the number of colors for cleared
people to four and began using green badges for fully cleared employees. Metal- badges
returned in 1959 and were standard until the late 1970s. NSA employees found them ideal
for scraping ice off windshields. 29
Along with a badge system, NSA began restricting area access. By 1953 the security
division had devised three work area designations: restricted, secure, and exclusion. The
"red seal" and "blue seal" tabs used for so many years to designate compartmented areas
did not, however, come into use until NSA moved to its new quarters at Fort Meade in
1957. 30
NSA's controversial experiment in polygraph screening was rooted in the Korean War.
As new employees flooded into the training school at Nebraska Avenue, the security
system was overwhelmed with clearance requirements. Then, as now, employees were
cleared through a combination of the National Agency Check and background
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investigations, conducted by the services. By December 1950 the system was so inundated
that 39 percent of AFSA employees were uncleared. NSA security people began casting
about for a quick way to process clearances and fastened their attention on the polygraph,
long used by law enforcement agencies in criminal investigations. Although polygraphs
were not admissable in court, AFSA discovered that CIA had begun using them for people
being indoctrinated for COMINT as early as 1948 and only two months earlier, had
broadened testing to include the entire CIA work force. 31 Studies showed it to be a more
reliable indicator of loyalty than the background investigation, and it was proposed that
the polygraph be tried as a way to get an "interim" clearance. Canine approved a trial
program in January 1951, but implementation was tricky. AFSA had to buy the
equipment, recruit polygraph examiners from the police departments and private
detective agencies around the country, build soundproof rooms for the interviews, and
become experienced in interpreting results in this new and experimental area of loyalty
verification.
The new polygraph procedures began on a trial basis at the U Street location in May of
1951. Soon examiners were working from seven in the morning to eleven at night. By the
end of September, they had cleared the backlog and went back to regular hours. AFSA had
suddenly acquired hundreds of employees with something called a "temporary" clearance,
who still required completion of the background investigation to become "permanent."
But in the helter-skelter time of war, no one paid the slightest attention to the difference,
and on the day NSA was created a large portion of the work force worked with a temporary
clearance. This situation would come back to haunt NSA in 1960 when Martin and
Mitchell fled to Moscow and NSA's clearance practices were called into question. (See p
280.)
In the rush to clear people, there was considerable breakage. Examiners were used to
dealing with criminal investigations, and some of them had trouble making the transition.
Hostile questions elicited emotional responses, and the rate of unresolved interviews
approached 25 percent. The incredibly long hours added to the stress, and by the end of the
first summer it was hard to tell who was more stressed, the examiners or the examinees.
But after a very bumpy start, things smoothed out, and the security organization claimed
to have cleared up lingering administrative problems by 1953.
When first begun, the polygraph was "voluntary," but Canine declared that if an
applicant did not volunteer, the application went no further. The fiction of optional
polygraphs continued until 6 December 1953, after that historic date all applicants were
polygraphed. But there were always exceptions to the general rule that all employees
were polygraphed. No requirement was established to include existing employees in the
system, and the military, amid much controversy, refused to allow its people to be
polygraphed. 32
The modern (and usually functional, if somewhat cranky) classified waste disposal
system of the 1990s was a good deal less high-tech in 1952. Early destruction at both
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Arlington Hall and Nebraska Avenue was by incineration. Burnbags were stapled shut,
as they are today, were marked with the originators' organization, and were placed in
central collection locations. Once picked up, they were pitched into the fire by a military
detail, and destruction was certified by a commissioned officer.
In late 1951 AFSA, determined to modernize the procedure, ordered two Somat
machines, which AFSA officials had seen in operation at CIA. The machines operated
much like the present destruction facility but on a much smaller scale. There was a
whirling tub resembling a cement mixer, into which the burnbags were thrown. The door
was then closed, water was injected, and the tub churned. But the early models did not
work very well, and the whole process was as dirty as a paper mill. NSA later returned to
the old standby incinerator until something better could be devised. 33
NSA AND THE U.S. INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM
NSA and its director were coping with the problems - technical, organizational, and
fiscal - in establishing a truly global SIGINT system, which at one and the same time would
serve national and parochial interests. This required a strong central institution and
considerable adjustment of the old ways of doing business. When Canine tried to make the
adjustments, he ran into opposition from every direction. His attempts to impose
uniformity were opposed by the SCAs, while his SIGINT turf was simultaneously being
invaded by the CIA.
Consumer Groups Come to NSA
The modern method of marketing SIGINT is primarily through Cryptologic Support
Groups (CSGs) accredited to consumer organizations. Many NSAers are surprised that it
was not always such. But in fact, the system began exactly opposite. In the beginning,
consumers established liaison detachments (sometimes referred to as "beachheads")
within NSA. Indeed, NSCID 9 codified what already existed in AFSA when it stated that
"the Director shall make provision for participation by representatives of each of the
departments and agencies eligible to receive COMINT products in those offices of NSA
where priorities of intercept and processing are finally planned." The motivating force
appears to have been to give customers a voice in setting COMINT collection and reporting
priorities. But the customers did not limit themselves to expressing requirements. All of
them sifted COMINT information and interpreted the meaning back to their parent
organizations. Some of them actually produced their own report series and distributed
them to their home offices.
In the beginning, many of these organizations were quite large and robust: in 1954
both Army and Office of Naval Intelligence had fifty-two analysts at NSA, CIA had
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and State ha d four. Air Force Security Service, however, had by far the
largest, a total of eighty-one analysts working in an outfit called AFSSOP (Air Force
Security Service Office of Production), which produced COMINT summaries digested from
the mass of technical information available only at NSA headquarters.
NSA did not like the system, and over the years it made moves to cut off the flow of
technical information that kept the consumer groups alive. These attempts were initially
unsuccessful, but the beachheads gradually became smaller and finally faded out of
existence, victims of an aggressive NSA external reporting program that made them
unnecessary. By the end of the 1950s they were gone, except for liaison detachments that
had no production or interpretive responsibilities. 34
The Struggle for Technical Control
NSCID 9 gave NSA "operational and technical control" of all U.S. COMINT operations.
This revolutionary authority proved to be the glue that knit the COMINT community
together.
Those who have lived within a unified system all their working lives cannot appreciate
the technical problems that confronted NSA in November 1952. For instance, among the
British, Army, and Navy, there were in the 1940s seven different naming conventions for
Soviet codes and ciphers.
The Navy began the Second World War usingT
The British began withj
The Army began with
• ^ The Navv copied Soviet intercept.
|while the Army used sin''
The British were copying thing;
1
Each organization had its own traffic formats. When the traffic cake into NSA, itftl
had to be hand-massaged to make it suitable for any sort of" processing A coordin Jed
attack on high-grade systems would be too time-intensive without sta^idardizatipfi. 35
Someone had to dictate formats.
The impetus behind standardization was processing. Raw traffic and digested extracts
(called TECSUMs, or technical summaries) cascaded into NSA headquarters in
unmanageable volumes. An NSA Technical Management Board created soon Me/ NSA
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itself was established concluded that collection, and thus collection equipment, would have
to be homogenized to permit NSA to process the traffic.
The original vehicle for securing compliance was a program of NSA circulars. They
covered procedures for intercept, traffic forwarding, end product reporting, and services
and facilities. In addition, NSA published Unit Operations Orders describing in general
terms the mission of each unit authorized to produce COMINT. These publications, when
taken together, constituted the NSA Field Operating Manual, a device borrowed directly
from Army usage. Canine regarded them as directive, and he tenaciously enforced
compliance, but the SCAs resisted. They initially regarded NSA directives as voluntary
suggestions. 36
By 1956 the SCA units were having trouble distinguishing operating policy from
technical guidance, which had over the preceding four years become hopelessly scrambled
between the two categories of documents. So NSA created a new system that looked a lot
less like an Army directive, called MUSCO (Manual of U.S. COMINT Operations). Within
two years ELINT had been added to the national cryptologic mission, and MUSCO was
changed again, to MUSSO (Manual of U.S. SIGINT operations). On those occasions when a
consumer needed to know how SIGINT was produced or what NSA's operating policy was, a
special series of MUSSO documents called INFOCONS was issued. 37
In April 1954, Canine unceremoniously yanked control of field site placement away
from the SCAs. Henceforth, the establishment of field sites would be done only with the
permission of the director. Even site surveys had to be coordinated with NSA first. Canine
relented to the extent of allowing SCAs to place small (less than ten-position) sites during
peacetime without his direct "chop." The important message, however, was that DIRNSA
had now delegated this authority, implying rather directly that what he delegated he
could rescind. 38
And while he was at it, the director pushed the concept, completely foreign to the
SCAs, of cross-servicing, whereby targets would be collected by the most technically
capable intercept site regardless of service affiliation. During the Korean War, for
instance, ASA sites collected a good deal of North Korean air force communications under
the cross-servicing concept (and to the loudly voiced complaints of USAFSS). 39
NSCID 9 gave the director untrammeled authority over COMINT direct support
resources. A theater commander could request such support, but it was entirely up to
DIRNSA whether the request was honored or not. Canine's directive on control of direct
support assets narrowly defined the conditions under which the director would delegate
control. When and if he did, it would normally be to the SCA chief, not an "unlettered"
field commander. There were no provisions for appeal should DIRNSA deny the request.
This provision of DIRNSA's authority stood basically unchallenged through the 1950s, a
time when there was very little direct tactical support to be done, anyway. It did not
become an issue until the advent of the war in Vietnam.
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Having destroyed the prerogatives of the arm ed services, Canine, barely a month
later, released control o f two ASA tactical units,
(b)(1)
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ltd the commanding general of ASA. He made it plain, however,
that these units were being released solely at his sufferance and pointedly reserved the
right to task them temporarily or withdraw them completely for national tasking, at any
time. 40
In 1955, Canine decreed that new types of field site equipment would henceforth
require NSA coordination. In a letter to the three SCA chiefs, he stated that NSA would
establish standards for facilities and equipment, manning and staffing factors, site
surveys, and operational procedures. NSA set up a large and aggressive R&D program to
work out equipment and facility standards. The people and equipment for this effort had
been inherited from ASA and NSG, though in San Antonio AFSS clung to its own R&D
organization and was more independent in this respect than the other two services.* 1
The Decentralization Plan
While Canine moved to secure unchallenged authority over COMINT, he began, almost
simultaneously, a parallel and apparently opposite program called "decentralization."
The objectiv e of the program was to improve the speed of delivery of COMINT information to
consumers.
The issue had been pushed hard by General
Hoyt Vandenberg when he had been Chief of Staff of the Air Force. Vandenberg had
wanted to make COMINT the basis for an independent Air Force intelligence component to
back up the strategic force. Security Service and Air Force intelligence officials insisted on
direct support and, in a series of conferences with NSA in the summer and fall of 1953,
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hammered out an agreement which resulted in NSA turning on a flow of high-precedence
reports to both commands. This first included reporting from NSA but soon devolved on
both field units and AFSCC. By 1954 NSA had reluctantly delegated analysis and
reporting on th e) I problem to AFSCC, and it became the key
player in COMINT warning to Air Force commands, a virtual third echelon competitor to
NSA. 44 ° .
When the decentralization plan was officially launched in August 1954, it looked like
planned.engine thrust reversal. Under it, NSA assigned specific COMINT problems to
specified field sites. The criteria for assignment were perishabilty, collectability, and
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Relations with the SCAs
By the mid-1950s, Canine basically had what he wanted - unrestrained authority over !
the entire Defense COMINT system (with a single exception which will be discussed below).)
But it had not been a cost-free victory. Relations with all three SCAs were strained to aj
greater or lesser degree.
The relationship with ASA was probably the best. ASA and NSA came to agreement
on key issues such as decentralization and release of operational control to direct suppori
resources somewhat earlier than the other two services. ASA was of a mind to play the
centralization game with NSA "straight up" and gained considerable good will as a result,
occasional complaints from ASA field offices about "meddling" by NSA field officek
notwithstanding.
Regarding naval COMINT, Canine and the Navy were speaking a different language.
That they did not get into as many battles as NSA and the Air Force one can probably
ascribe to the fact that most of the time they were simply speaking past each other. \ I
(b) (3)-50 USC 403
(b) (3)-18 USC 798
(b) (3)-P.L. 86-36
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Canine thought that Navy COMINT was organized like Army and Air Force COMINT, but
this was not the case. The Navy had no integral cryptologic command akin to ASA or
AFSS. Navy COMlNTcame under naval communications (OP-20), and fixed field sites were
generally assigned to naval communications organizations for administrative and
organizational matters. Naval afloat detachments were instruments of the fleet
commander, not NSG. Certain central functions were performed at Nebraska Avenue by
Naval Security Group, but it did not have the same, authorities as its counterparts at
Arlington Hall and Kelly AFB. In 1955, a frustrated Captain Jack Holtwick penned a
lengthy memo bemoaning the difficulty that Canine was having with naval COMINT.
Captain Jack Holtwick
A highly influential naval cryptanaiyst, Holtwick occupied
key positions in the early NSA organization.
For more than ten years, people . . . have been talking about something which has never really
existed as an entity, namely the Navy Cryptologic Agency These organizations [speaking of
all Navy COMINT organizations] were an entity only insofar as they were engaged in the same
trade and mutually complemented one another in it. They have never had a legal cryptologic
organizational head, let alone a functional commander. Their lowest common superior was and
is the Chief of Naval Operations 48
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By 1956, however, Canine apparently understood enough of Navy COMINT
organization to object to its entire philosophy. He took aim at the subordination of NSGi
detachment commanders to naval communications: "This is an unsatisfactoryj
arrangement; there is always a conflict of basic interests in the direction of the units. The;
superior officers in the chain of command ... are primarily concerned with general service'
communications; they are generally inexperienced in COMINT functions " He related
the submersion of Navy COMINT to Navy communications with SCA position totals, in thai
from 1953 to 1956 NSG grew by only 7 percent, while ASA expanded by 380 percent an<J
AFSS by 410 percent. This, he contended, resulted from deficient naval COMINT
organization. 50 j
In contrast to NSG, AFSS growth was breathtaking. From a tiny cadre of 156 peopi
in 1948, AFSS grew to 23,128 people by the end of 1960. The command had over l,0(jo
positions, a budget of more than $26 million, and it had surged ahead of both. ASA arid
NSG on all counts in only twelve years. 51
NSA's relations with AFSS, however, were the worst of the three. Although COMsk
relations were smooth, COMINT was not. Under the hollow gaze of AFSA, AFSS hkd
virtually seceded from th e COMINT community, carryin g its entire field site list with it. I It
had called the field sitesl ^ so as to exempt them from AF$A
tasking. (Major General John Morrison [USAF], a former NSA assistant director for
production, once said that j k ith very isolated exceptions, were
about as l k.the Eifel Tower.") 52 Canine's dicta onpperational and technical control
■ l ... ' uii.vpoiauuHar aiiu LCUUUCai COHDrOl
were intended largely.to corral the errant AFSS resources. This was effective but did Lot
make AFSS very happy. I
The biggest row of the decade. was over the Air Force Special X Communications Center
(AFSCC). Officially created in July 1953 as the 6901st Special" Communications Center,
AFSCC was intended as a third echelon processing center to satisfy Air Force desire^ for
an indigenous Air Force COMINT center. The organization picked tip such miscellaneous
functions as the SSO system and the USAFSS training school but wasintended all along
as an analytical center and began functioning as one from its very first: day of existence.
Canine had said "No" to the Air Force plan but lost the battle: In January 1&54 he ga^e up
and, under the aegis of the decentralization plan, AFSCC acquired tni, mission of
processing and reporting on th q [ To tins nucleusWs a4ded,
over the years, virtually .the entir e | |as well as, beginning in%96i, the
" Relationships continued to de$eriorate^>ii5;;by ; the end
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of his term as DIRNSA, it was rumored that Canine, was barely on speaking terms with the
AFSS commander, Major General Hunt Bassett. 54
The SCAs Create Second Echelons
The decentralization plan spawned a second concept,! |
. \ frequently wound up
controlling related intercept positions at smaller units. The arrangement amounted to a
de facto layering system in which large units controlled operations at smaller units, and in
some cases the smaller units were officially subordinated to the larger ones. The
intermediate tier came to be known as "second-echelon," while NSA (and in the Air Force,
AFSCC) operations were called "third echelon."
(b) (3)-50 USC 403
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All three services created administrative units to supervise theater intercept sites,
and to serve a liaison function with the supported commander(s). However, they all
showed a disinclination to combine operational and administrative functions in the same
organization, believing those to be separate tasks. 58
Watching the Watchers
DIRNSA's supervisor was not really the secretary of defense, despite what the Truman
Memorandum said. In 1953 the secretary of defense assigned that job to General Graves
B. Erskine, a Marine Corps four-star who was already assigned to his staff as head of the
Office of Special Operations. Erskine monitored the CIA budget, which was hidden in the
DoD budget, and after July 1953 he also monitored NSA. His deputy, Air Force colonel
Edward Lansdale, later became famous as the author of covert actions projects in both the
Philippines and Vietnam.
The monitoring that Erskine did was rather loose. He always retained professional
cryptologists on his staff to work the details of cryptologic money, and under such a
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system, oversight was not detailed. Occasionally a big-ticket item would come up, like
LIGHTNING (see p. 204), and Erskine's office would become involved. But Congress bad not
yet instituted an effective review of the intelligence agencies (and did not until the mid-
1970s), and CIA did not yet have the authority to ride herd on the finances of the DoD
intelligence organizations. So by the standards of later days, no one was really paying
much attention to the intricacies of NSA's money. 59
NSA AND CIA -THE EARLY YEARS
Will you please have the proper instructions issued discontinuing the cryptanalytical units in the
offices of the Director of Censorship, the Federal Communications Commission and the Strategic
Services, rf you are aware of any other agencies having services of this character, will you please
have them discontinued also.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Memorandum for Director of Budget, 8 July 1942
The origins of CIA were rooted in World War II. Roosevelt, under the pressure of
wartime exigency, created an espionage agency in 1942, called the Office of Strategic
Services (OSSI), under New York lawyer and World War I battlefield hero (winner of the
Medal of Honor in France) William Donovan. Donovan's agency both collected and
produced intelligence and mounted covert operations around the world. It was a mission
that CIA was to inherit several years later.
NSA's difficulties with CIA stemmed from decisions made in the 1940s, almost all of
them bad. JCS, which owned most of America's intelligence assets, opposed OSS from the
beginning and did everything in its power to deny to OSS the resources to do its job. The
Joint Chiefs failed to keep OSS out of the HUMINT business, but in one area they succeeded
almost totally: COMINT was denied.
Roosevelt's order (above) resulted in the closure of a small OSS COMINT organization.
Even worse, it was used by the JCS to deny to OSS access to ULTRA. Thus OSS reporting
was crippled from the beginning. It had access to agent reports, photoreconaissance, POW
and defector reports - everything, in short, but the most useful and reliable information. If
World War II was, as has been claimed, a COMINT war, OSS remained on the intelligence
sidelines. 60
And it rankled. OSS seniors who later served in the higher ranks of CIA never
accepted the JCS policy. The British intelligence services, which dealt closely with OSS,
were appalled. Their own intelligence community was unified, and HUMINT was routinely
integrated with COMINT in highly specialized offices, in order to reap full value from both.
(For instance, Ian Fleming, a British naval officer and later author of some note, was
responsible for the integration of Bletchley-produced ULTRA with the Navy's HUMINT and
HANOLF. VIA TAI FWT TrFVTTOT IT rmtmw PnHTini nui ' UHU }IUk\ > \\\ y
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special operations.) JCS had used security as justification for the denial of ULTRA to OSS,
but the British were at least as security conscious as the Americans, and they seemed able
to get COMINT of the highest sensitivity to those in the HUMINT business who needed it.
The outright denial of ULTRA to OSS just did not make sense. 61
Truman discontinued OSS immediately after the end of the war, partly to rid himself
of Donovan, who was not in favor with the president. But within six months Truman once
again had himself an intelligence organization, called the Central Intelligence Group.
CIG was bedeviled by the same problems that submerged AFSA - lack of its own budget
and personnel resources (people were loaned in from other intelligence organizations),
absence of a congressional mandate, and lack of firm direction from the top. But the idea
was the same as that of AFSA - to establish central control of U.S. intelligence operations.
When CIA was created in 1947, succeeding CIG, it got its congressional mandate, its
budget, and its own personnel. It still lacked firm leadership, but that was remedied in
1950 with the appointment of General Walter Bedell Smith as DCI. Smith had been
Eisenhower's chief of staff in Europe, and he knew how to run a tight ship. Tussling with
"Beetle" Smith was like landing in a cactus patch.
In the early days the only high-level COMINT available to CIG was a copy of the MAGIC
Summary put out by the Army, which was available in the Pentagon. In the very early
days, only fifty people in CIG had a COMINT clearance. But in June of 1946 Hoyt
Vandenberg became DCI. Vandenberg was fresh from a tour as chairman of USCIB and
knew the value of COMINT. In December he created an organization within CIG, called the
Advisory Council, to deal with what he hoped would be a flood of COMINT reports.
For a while there were few reports to disseminate. Requests for access to COMINT
reports were generally denied. But in early 1947, two CIG organizations began to get
involved with COMINT operations. The first was OSO (Office of Special Operations, the
clandestine organization), which in March proposed to the Army and the Navy that they
begin a Joint Counterintelligence Center (JCIC), using COMINT as the basic source of
information. The services received this enthusiastically, and JCIC was established at
Nebraska Avenue, with the understanding that it would eventually move to CIG. (It
moved to CIA in 1949.)
At about the same time, Colonel Robert Schukraft, chief of the Communications
Division at CIG, was establishing a relationship with ASA. Schukraft had been a key
figure in wartime Army COMINT and knew many of the peo ple involved in the COMINT
business. He began a relationship with Frank Rowlett at ASA\
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The operational aspects of these budding relationships eventually came under the
aegis of OSO, and specifically one William ("Bill") Harvey, a former FBI agent who
became legendary for his clandestine nnftratinnc iTnAa-r H n , m „ „ tt ,„ „ vor ;„ 1Qgn j
COM1NT operational matters became centralizfidj \j-
/(b) (1)
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Me anwhile, CIA requests for COMINT reports were still being Routinely turned down.
But th e | Contributed to breaking
^ logjam, ana ever larger volumes oi UUM1M' report series were forwarded to CIA. Once
at CIA, the material was subdivided according to subject matter and farmed out to
analysts through the auspices of the Advisory Council. CIA was determined to base
reporting on all-source information, rather than to strictly segregate COMINT from all
other sources. Of necessity, then, the number of CIA COMINT clearances rose rapidly, until
by 1970 most intelligence analysts were cleared for the source. (See Table 5.) CIA policy
stood in contrast to that of the Pentagon, which generally chose to compartment COMINT
and to deal with two separate handling systems -COMINT and all other sources.
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When AFSA was created, CIA made a pitch for a more active role in COMINT. Then-
DCI Roscoe Hillenkoetter proposed that he should be given the chairmanship of USCIB
but this was quickly overruled. CIA
| k ut was being told in unmistakable fashion that they would
remain on the sidelines when it came to the policy aspects of comint. That was still the
domain of the JCS.
CIA remained a major critic of comint throughout the AFSA period, and
Hillenkoetter's successor, Walter bedell Smith, played an important role in getting the
president to appoint the Brownell Committee. CIA was determined to get a bigger stake
in the game.
Smith got much of what he wanted from Brownell. He was made chairman of USCIB
and, as such, could play a large role in COMINT policy. The results of the Brownell Report
also gave CIA the chance to lean on the new NSA to get its own requirements satisfied. No
longer would the civilians have to take a perpetual backseat to military requirements. 63
CIA Enters the COMINT Business
In the beginning, CIA probably did not intend to build its own crvptol ogic
organization. Two very senior NSA officials, Louis Tordella andl |both
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Tf7P c ,FrnFTiiMnnft-
elosely in volved in the NSA-CIA relationship, categorically deny that t;his was the intent,
himself described his first interview with Allen Dulles when he\ transferred from
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NSA to CIA: "I mean Dulles put it flatly, we were not going into competition with NSA.
We've got enough to do in CIA and we're not going to fragmentize [sic] our\efforts by going
over there and starting a . . . COMINT organization. . . ." M But CIA Reeded certain
information, and as long as cryptology remained the province of the Department of
Defense, he felt it could not get its requirements satisfied. Smith decided to change things.
The CIA Act of 1949 gav e the espionage agency the authority to expend what were
called "discretionary funds;"
|for...w.hich i the director would not have to answer to Congress in any detail
According to Tordella, the PCI firiTusecl ""these moneys
To a great extent this developed out of on-going CIA operatidtts;
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CIA and Cryptographic Materials
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. i£ ri0 area did N SA and CIA clash more frequen#and with as much vigor/ as in | I
L patters. There, NSCID 5 was in direct conflict with the" BRUSA Agreement
half-dozen most lmporta^iEryptologists in America; had had a choppy relationship with
jfelt that his own temperament was tooMethodical/for the hip-
General Canine.
shooting Canine, and the two were not getting along when/Canine, in/ a mood to
reorganize, decreed that al l his seni ors would rotate jobs, An order td infuse the
organization with new ideas. I f who had been working 4 COMINT, Was ordered to
COMSEC.I Je
"Twas joined by a small but experienced group of NSAers. i ncludingl
was COMINT matters.
whose province
wno was well aware of the benefits of continued collaboration with the[
partners, brought some order into CIA's COMINT matters. 77
1
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a.
The Third Parties in the Early Years
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[ 0n its side > however, NSA also made mistakes. The most serious was in
denying technical help to some of the more advanced Third Parties. This unyielding
position often reduced CIA equities in other areas and damaged NSA's relationship with
its senior intelligence partner.
/
CIA in the NSA Trenches
The most direct CIA involvement in NSA was a CIA-controlled analysis division
which existed for the better part of six years. This strange story began with the Soviet
explosion of an atomic bomb.
When, in September of 1949, the Soviets exploded their first nuclear device, the eerie
light from the explosion silhouetted a U.S. intelligence system in disarray. It had been
CIA's job to follow Soviet nuclear technology, but JCS intelligence organizations gave CIA
only lukewarm cooperation. The result was a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE),
issued earlier in the year, featuring a wide variety of estimates of Soviet acquisition of
effective nuclear technology, none of them even close to being accurate. /
s
As AFSA-246 became NSA-75, CIA turned more and more to direct action. In 1953,
Canine and Loftus Becker, CIA's deputy director for intelligence, inked an agreement that
turned management of the division over to CIA. It was captained by a CIA person, kept its ,
own database, did its own reporting, and even forwarded raw COMINT to CIA headquarters \
for further analysis.
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OPC
In 1948 CIA, in cooperation with a Department of State organization called ~
(Office of Policy Coordination), began beaming .propaganda (sonie would say "n|ws")
broadcasts toward the Soviet Bloc. The operation was called Vbice^f America, and it jlived
a long and healthy life during the Cold War. Predictably, however, as soon as the jVOA
stations went on the air, the Communist nations at which4hey were targetted bjegan
jamming the broadcasts. Thus ensued, in February of 194$; yet another area of intense
competition between CIA and the cryptologic community// I
Tackling the problem of jamming would involve radip'monitoring. CIA took on tbje job
in 1949 and immediately began preparing a plan to identify and locate the jammers 1 and
devise a solution., in June 1950 an ad hoc group/of the IAC (Intelligence Advisory
Committee chaired by the DCI) approved a preliminary monitoring plan, called
Just how Admiral Stone of AFSA found out about it is not known, but it was hard to
keep secrets at the IAC level. In any case, Stone contacted the Department of State (at the
time OPC was still officially part of State/ather than CIA) in July of 1950 to let them
know that he regarded this as an A^SA responsibility under NSCID 9. Hillenko|tter
justified CIA activity to AFSAC as being performed under the section of the National
Security Act that permitted CIA to perform "such additional services of common concern
as the National Security Council determines can be more efficiently accomplished
centrally. . . ." This was a weak reed, and Hillenkoetter made his case even less plausible
by stating that monitoring facilities so established could be used for other purposes in time
of war. Such a direct challenge to AFSA authority in COMINT brought a predictable
AFSAC respon se, and in "N ovember USCIB took up the issue. USCIB conclude^ in
November that | | was a COMINT mission and should be headed by AFSAj A
USCIB study costed the problem at $5 million and 355 people. But when the matter vfent
before the National Security Council in early 1951, CIA won. The NSC directed that CIA
be the focal point/or a multi-agency attack on the jamming problem.
AFSA wrote a supporting plan but continued to insist that it be given the mission.
When Canine became director, he took forceful exception to CIA encr oachment in the
situation. But Canine was handicapped by limited resources. | |;vas
going to be expensive, and when the SCAs were polled, they offered only part-time DF
facilities. NSA did not have the money to create a separate system just to monitor
jamming, and the military services contended that they could not provide the
communications to interlock a monitoring system anyway. So in February 1952 President
Truman approved a plan for CIA to proceed on its own.
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Just what was ^ anyway? Jammers actually produced noncommunications
signals, and the Army contended tha t they were E UNT, not COMINT. The entire subject of
ELINT was in chaos at the. time $ and simply contributed to the disorder. The
"services also saw electronic warfare applications, and they wanted their own people in the
projected NSA-controlled| fcites to send EW-related information to their parent
services. NSA feared this approach because it would spread COMiNT-related information
outside codeword channels, and the services might turn the information into EW
(electronic warfare) projects that would block COMINT hearability. This prompted NSA to
appoint a committee to study the matter of jamming versus COMINT requirements. The
confusion in definitions foreshadowed more serious divisions during the Vietnam era.
_^This
was a
direct invasion of NSA's turf.
In the mid-1950s, as
schemes .emerged for the eventual institutionalization of
continued along an inconclus ive course, various
Most had as their
central assumption that CIA would not continue in charge, and some placed NSA in
control. Thy services wanted the mission but did not want to budget for it. One proposed
plan would even have given the mission to the Federal Communications Commission. In
late 1955, the secretary of defense put the matter to rest by decreeing that it was an elint
mission and made the Air Force executive agent. The Air Force had only recently become
executive agent for ELINT, and i t had a central EUNT processing center. Since no resources
were allocated to dc |
it became subsumed in the overall service ELINT mission.
So in the end a separate monitoring system was not built. The jamming mission was
handled as a corollary miss ion by the th ree SCAs, and when, in 1958, control of elint went
to NSA, the threat posed by| vanished. 91
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In April 1956, after heavy rains caused interruptions in communications service in the
East Zone, East German maintenance worker s discove red the taps and Unearthed the
entire operation. In the space of a few hours, | | was shut down, and the acting
commandant of the Soviet Berlin Garrison held a press conference on the /site of the
" 'capitalist warmongers' expensive subterranean listening post.' " Now thajfc the whole
world knew about ] | CIA could not continu j" [ for security-
reasons. After April 1956, CIA sent an enormous volume of unprocessed channel hours
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Years later the "accidental" discovery
of] came under serious question. In
1961 George Blake, a British MI-6 official
w ho had b een involved with the planning
bf | | was identified as a Soviet mole
by a Polish defector and was subsequently
arrested and jailed. In 1970 Blake, who
had escaped from a British jail and fled to
Moscow, bragged to the press that he had
betrayed the Berlin Tunnel operation. It
was also susp ected tha t he had blown the
whistle on the ) "O peration, too.
Bitterness between NSA and CIA
lasted for years. Canine was
understandably upset when he found that
he had been bypassed and left in the
dark. PCI Allen Dulles once mused that.
George Blake
NSA and CIA continued to clash over a variety of issues as long as Dulles and Canine
were the respective helmsmen. Yet the warfare was oddly out of place in Dulles's office.
According to historian Thomas Powers, Dulles "never attempted to exercise [authority
over the Defense Department intelligence components], partly in the interest of
maintaining bureaucratic peace with the military, and partly because he just did not
»93
care.
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Allen Dulles
Dulles was interested in HUMINT and
covert operations, not technical intelligence.
Richard Bissell, who headed the CIA's
operations organization in the late 1950s,
once said that "Dulles was always being
encouraged by successive Presidents to
exercise more direction of the whole
intelligence community. And Allen always
resisted that. . . . He always wanted to run
his Agency and exercise a direct,
unambiguous control " M
According to senior NSA officials of the time, the era of CIA's SIGINT system Was
already beginning to fade. They had neither the time nor the money to pursue a big SIGINT
system and a big HUMlNT/covert actions system simultaneously, and so SIGINT /Was
sacrificed. /
General John Samford, who replaced Canine in 1956, moved to heal the breach; with
Dulles and the CIA. Samford was a consummate diplomat, and he probably gained; more
by soft-soaping the downtown intelligence people than Canine could have done through
head-on collisions. 95 ■ /
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NSA's Other Competitors
The growing size and importance of COMINT made it inevitable that the cryptologic
organizations of the armed services would have other competitors from time to time.
During World War II there had been several.
The Federal Communications Commission had a long history of communications
monitoring to secure compliance with federal radio regulations'. During the early part of
World War II, the FCC published a series of magazine articles plugging their successful
efforts at finding Axis agent communications. The Army and Navy cryptologists did not
appreciate this glare of publicity on their secret profession, and they sought to get
Roosevelt to close down FCC operations. Roosevelt's order of 1942 (cited at the beginning
of this chapter) was meant to apply to the FCC and other competitors of the Army and
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Navy, but there is evidence that the FCC continued a small intercept effort into the
postwar period. At some undefined point in the 1950s, the effort was probably shut down.
The FBI represented a far stronger and potentially more dangerous foe. But J. Edgar
Hoover's interests were more limited, and throughout his life the FBI displayed a certain
ambivalence toward involvement in COMINT. During World War II the FBI was one of the
three organizations given a COMINT role. Namely, they were responsible for monitoring of
the communications of Axis agents in Latin America. This apparently simple division of
effort placed the FBI in almost constant conflict with OP-20-G, which had a very similar
mission. By all accounts, the FBI had a small but competent intercept and cryptanalytic
section of indeterminate size. But COMINT had nothing to do with Hoover's main thrust as
FBI director, and after the war the FBI COMINT effort was reduced. When FBI joined
STANCIB in 1947 (which then became USCIB), Rear Admiral Thomas Inglis, the
chairman of USCIB, offered COMINT resources to monitor agent communications and do
the cryptanalysis. Hoover accepted, mainly because this would allow him to divert FBI
resources to other matters. In 1947 FBI withdrew from USCIB, allegedly because of
declining budget to do COMINT tasks.
Even more
important was the AFSA-FBI liaison which led ultimately to the arrest of the atomic spies
(see p. 160). 96
•ELINT and NSA
ELINT as an intelligence discipline probably began during the Battle of Britain. The
intercept of noncommunications signals was first attempted by one R. V. Jones, who
successfully collected mysterious German navigational signals used by the Luftwaffe to
steer their bombers to targets over Britain. Jones employed electronic countermeasures to
divert the bombers and cause many of the bombs to fall off target. It was one of Churchill's
top secrets of the war. 97
The British understood the close relationship between ELINT and COMINT, and they
centralized both under GCHQ. But when they tried to deal with the United States, they
found American ELINT to be frustratingly decentralized. It wasn't just that they had to
deal directly with the SCAs rather than AFSA and NSA, they found that even within the
individual services there was no focal point.
The SCAs did much of the ELINT collection for their respective services. Each one had
a network of ELINT collection sites, often collocated with COMINT sites. But the tactical
commanders also had their own ELINT assets, often airborne (and shipborne, in the case of
the Navy). Once collected, the intercepted tapes were forwarded to processing centers in
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the theater and on to the United States. Some of the processing centers were joint-service
operations, while some were single-service.
By 1953 the Army and Navy had established a consolidated ELINT processing center
called ANEEG (Army-Navy Electronic Evaluation Group) collocated with NSG at
Nebraska Avenue. The Air Force did not participate, preferring to keep a separate
processing facility at AFSS headquarters, under the auspices of the Air Force Technical
Intelligence Center (ATIC) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. NSA
was not involved in this tangled web.
In 1953 the Robertson Committee (see p. 227) reported to Canine on the profoundly
disorganized nature of American ELINT and concluded that as a source of warning
information, this intelligence discipline was in danger of becoming irrelevant. The
committee recommended that a focal point be found. 98
CIA, too, was unhappy with the way ELINT was being managed and in the same year
conducted an internal study that indicted the Defense Department for mismanagement of
ELINT. CIA pointed out that there was no central authority, no coordination of ELINT
activities, and no central processing. The study opted to place central control in USCIB,
but one option which the drafters seriously considered was to give NSA the job.
There being no focus in U.S. intelligence for EUNT, CIA began to take on this task also.
In 1954, the deputy director, General CP. Cabell (USAF), appointed an ELINT czar by
giving H. Marshall Ch adwell, the assistant director for scientific intelligence, an
additional hat for ELINT. \
When he received the Robertson study in November of 1953, General Erskine in the
office of the secretary of defense called in Canine and requested an NSA response. On
returning to Arlington Hall, Canine found his agency badly divided over what to do. The
eminent logic of combining ELINT and COMINT was sometimes obscured by the evident
difficulty of getting the services to heel to central authority and the dismal prospect of ever
getting a charter as clear and unequivocal as NSCID 9. If COMINT, with NSCID 9
conveying absolute authority, was proving so difficult to manage, what of ELINT?
Despite this, the allure of finally getting the two pieces of the electronics puzzle
together proved too strong. Under Canine's direction, NSA's Office of Plans and Policy
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produced a draft report which placed operational and technical control of ELINT with
DIRNSA. The battle was joined.
When the issue went to USCIB, the JCS predictably defended decentralization. Over
the ensuing two years, piles of studies were completed, and hundreds of options were
tossed about. The services never relented in their opposition to any sort of restriction on
the latitude of the tactical commanders to collect, process, and report ELINT. All concerned
recognized that there should be some sort of overall coordinating mechanism and that the
government must set up a central processing facility at which all the players would be
represented, including non-DoD organizations (i.e., CIA). NSA appeared to be the only
organization that felt that NSA should be in charge.
The "ELINT Problem" was temporarily resolved in May of 1955 with the publication of
NSCID 17. This document gave ELINT policy to USCIB and directed that a centralized
ELINT processing center be set up (the National Technical Processing Center, or NTPC).
..However, it still allowed for separate management of DoD and CIA ELINT activities. The
Air For ce was given executive r esponsibilities for both ELINT and monitoring of jamming
signals, Neither NSCID 17 nor the DoD implementing directive
resolved the issue ol where JN'J'PC was to be located. After months of discussion, the
services decided to keep it at Nebraska Avenue, where ANEEG was already located.
NTPC was comprised initially of approximately one hundred people from the three
services and CIA - NSA was not even represented. Most of the billets came from ANEEG,
and the SCAs exercised a predominant influence since they provided most of the expertise.
CIA, however, serit .a very strong delegation. An ELINT requirements group was
established in 1956, com prising representative s from the services plus CIA, and later in
the year a committee on was created. This was the first NTPC
organization that had any sort of NSA representation.
In 1956 NTPC was given the additional missioh,of processing telemetry from Soviet
missiles. This problem was to grow and multiply almost geometrically as the Soviet
missile problem became a national preoccupation. Sitting between COMINT and ELINT,
telemetry would soon become another area of controversy . between NSA and its
competitors.
NSCID 17 was remarkable for what it did not do. It did not establish operational
control in one organization. Nor did it rein in the propensities of tbe armed services to
fund separate ELINT assets for nearly every operational command. It did not unify the
technical aspects of the business. Instead, it consigned management to a committee which
was already deeply fractured on other issues (such as the dispute between NSA and CIA
over control of COMINT). It did not resolve anything at all, but it merely perpetuated an
existing condition. 100
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BUILDING THE OVERT COLLECTION SYSTEM
Few cryptologic fiel d sites survived World War II (see map on p. 113). By 194 7, the two
services were operating! / j \ V\ \ The Army
maintained large fixed field .sites, but very few of \ them. The Navy tended toward small
sites, many with only a DF/ missibn, scattered throughout the world to maintain a DF
baseline.
Even more striking Was the geographic pattern. The United States had but one
cryptologic organization oh the continent of Europe.
sites were in the U.S. Of^he rest, the Army collection site v
early days of World War/II. The other overseas sites were if
copied primarilyl [targets. The Navy's overseas sites were, all in the
pad existed s ince the
md.they
This soon changed. The Cold War, the Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia in
1948, the Communist victory in China in 1949, and the unpleasantness in Korea,
combined to force a revolution in America's cryptologic posture. The somnolent late 1940s
became the go-go 1950s. Cryptologic planning was stirred to a white, heat, and the
collection system fairly exploded. By 1960 American's cryptologic collection system
| had basically been built.
Three things typified this system:
1. The target was the Soviet U nion. China, Korea, and the East European satellites
were simply corollary targets.
2. Containment of Communist expansion was the objective. The collection systein
became geographically arrayed to resemble Lenin's pre dicted "capitalistic.
encirclement," a figurative string of pearls beginning in/
■ j And despite this seemingly
heedless expansion, NSA was barely able to keep up with customer requirements.
3. This was the Golden Age of HF. Long-haul HF systems dominated the world
communications networks. Above-HF transmissions did exist, but in HF's Golden
Age, most of the truly important messages seemed eventually to find some mode of
HF expression. Propagation vagaries demanded that collection sites be placed in a
wide variety of locations. But in theory, if one established enough sites and built
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(b)(3)-P.L. 86-36
Expansion proceeded on two fronts. The first Was ELINT, which Was chaos reborn. The
services embarked on a period of virtually uncontro lled site-building. .. eunt was above
HF. so si tes tended to be located in great prejfusion j
In this field each SCA had been given t^e primary collection job by its. respective
service, and each moved quickly to establish sites. In many, if not most, instances ELINT
preceded COMINT, and again in most cases elint sites already existed where COMINT sites
were later added. | \\
I J Added to this was a burgeoning airborne
collection system, fielded by USAFSS. NSA played inb role in ELINT, either in collection or
processing. \\
When it came to COMINT, though, NSA employed its guiding hand. Even before NSA
was created, AFSA had a master plan for the establishm ent of SCA intercept sites which
TJhis plan was passed on to NSA,
which refined it. NSA worked very closely with each\ SCA to determine collection
requirements and determine the best candidate locations. In the early 1950s NSA
asserted control over site surveys, without which no collect ion site cou ld be established.
NSA balanced customer requirements against existing overt sites, documented
hearability, and Second and Third Party contributions. If the project did not make sense,
DIRNSA could be counted on to oppose it. 101
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Xb) (1)
fb) (31-50 USC 403
(ti) (31-P.L. 06-36
t.b) 11)
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lb) (31-50 USC 403
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(b) (3)-50 USC 403
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Mb) (1)
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/ I &) (3)-P.L. 86-36
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Berlin was in an entirely different situation. Its status as a four-po^er decupied city
meant that Soviets could walk relatively freely even in the American 7 Secior. I Stalin's
attempt to squeeze the Westerners out of Berlin (resulting in the Berlin Aiirlift) W 1948
placed the city in a uniquely precarious position. In s uch circumstances tW first ipOMINT
intercept organization, a detachment of the ASA site / ~[ arrived in a
covert status and stayed only a few weeks in 1951. But ASA covert detachments kept
appearing in Berlin, and in the following year the command established a permanent unit
there, and the troops moved from tents to covered buildings. I
In 1953 the Army G-2 concluded that the results had been paltry and recommended
the site be closed, a strange finding given the later reputation of Berlin as a SI&NT
bonanza. Fortunately, no one listened to the G-2, and ASA conti nued to occupy a variety of
locations
AFSS followed ASA into
Berlin in 1954, beginning a presence in the city that would last until after the fall of the
Berlin Wall. 102 \
Berlin became a SIGINT gold mine, a window into the heart of the Communist Bloc
military system. In the mid-1950s the collection sites began to report the existence of VRF
communications, and NSA moved in to investigate. An NSA technician
discovered that Berlin was crisscrossed with above-HF communications that the West had i
never before intercepted, including Soviet high-capacity multichannel and microwave ; j
transmissions. The discovery was to have a profound influence on the development of thes I
SIGINT collection system. 103 f
(b) (3)-P.L. 86-36
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C;b) (3J-P.L. 86-36
DOCID: 3188691
W (1)
(Ex) (3)-50 USC 403
(b)'M3)-18 USC 798
(b) C31-P.L. 86-36
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DOCID: 3188691 \l\:l\ v V-ll
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DOCID: 3188691 WBI t;' W5
DOCID: 3188691
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DOCID: 3188691
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tb) (3) -18 USC 798
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'(i>) (1)
(£>.) (3) -50 USC 403 ' ,
DOCID: 3188691 (b ^>-« 7 9B ..,/(£
<b) (-3)-p.i,. 86-36 iyil
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(b) (3)-lS USC 798
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DOCID: 3188691 i^U™
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DOCID: 3188691 SI.U™
(bS-.(3)-e.L. B6-36
DOCID: 3188691
/(b) (1)
f (b) (3)-50 USC 403
(b) (3)~1B USC 798
!33
ASA PAC in the 1940s
ASA's first postwar Far East headquarters was in a relatively intact building
in downtown Tokyo. Japanese nationals staffed the support services.
The Far North/ //
All three services established collection sites in Alaska. The Kavy site at Adak dated
back to World /War jj, and the Air Force and Army soon followed. The USAFSS site grew
out of the a/World War II Army Air Corps asset. Security Se rvice established its
first collection site | . "| The Army site was
established hear Fairbanks (1950). But AFSS soon eclipsed ASA in resources, as the
Jproved to be very lucrative and the predominant one in Alaska.
Jeventually grew to become one of the major Security Service sites, while the
ASA site closed in 1959.
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kwt PCTi»g»iiirTn rnnrtmT ->t t -rrnuni .«
131
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What It Was Like
Military units tend to form around existing support organizations. Army units cluster
at Army posts, Air Force organizations locate at existing Air Force bases, Navy units form
at Navy bases. Cryptologic units, however, must go where they can hear targets. Where
there is an existing military base, so much the better. But if there is none, one must be
built specifically for the collection organization. This condition was especially true in the
1950s, when collection was done primarily to satisfy national, strategic requirements
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rather than to support tactical commanders. In such a situation, it was not necessary for
cryptologic organizations to stay with a supported commander. They could, and often did,
go off on their own.
Geographically, collection sites were scattered. They tended to be small, isolated, and
largely self-sufficient. Running a site required a very high level of independence and self-
reliance. Even when collocated on a major military installation, the SIGINT unit was not
part of the command structure. The post or base commander was generally not SI cleared
and treated the cryptologic unit somewhat like a leper. Under such conditions, support
was difficult to obtain.
In the late 1950s, Air Force Security Service under Major General Gordon Blake
decided to solve its logistics problems itself. With the blessings of the Air Force, AFSS
began managing bases at which its unit represented the major activi ty. Begun in July of
1958, the program eventually resulted in USAFSS's taking over/
jas^
well as their training base, Goodfellow AFB, Texas. The huge 466L building program (see
chapter 8) may have been a factor, but Blake himself claimed that troop support was the
driving force behind this program. It changed USAFSS into a large-scale landowner, and
it was not copied by either ASA or NSG. 119
Climate could b e an enemy. Air Force and Army sites at places
would frequently be snowed in much of the winter. Roads]
Jwere often impassable: Some sites could be supplied
]
only by helicopter. In the tropics, the lack of air conditioning at places like Clark made
work almost unbearable.
Even when the weather cooperated, condit ions in,.place.s
[were primitive. Army troops arriving
lived in pup tents for
months. There was initially no air strip, and! visitors to the site had a two-day drive from
over almost nonexistent roads. ::'
IZZH
Living conditions presen ted further challenges. A former resident of
a relatively "plush" location
terms:
describes the site in fairly realistic
The station itself was a loose cluster- of small, dusty buildings perche d on the cliff above the
■ village
■ our work went on in the shadow of a. ruined;[
Jibe age old strategic value of the place was shown by the fact that
Icastle.
(b) (1)
(b) (3)-50 USC 403
(b) (3)-18 USC 798
(b) (3J-P.L. 86-36
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(b) (31-P.L. 86-36
Water had to be hauled a mile from a spring. The site produced its own electricity With iliesel
generators, as the local power could not be ..relied on. There were no barracks, &nd\the site
personnel lived in apartments ! fr nd commuted by bus and boat | \\ [ bo
the site. Since the ferry did not run after dark, the eve and mid shifts had to report at 1W0, and
the off-duty watch slept in bunks in a quonsethut. 120 \ \
In the early days, intercept sites took on all manner of configuration, from squad tents
to quonsets to clapboard "hootches" in Southeast Asia. (The term "hootch" derived from
the Japanese word "uchi," meaning "home," and migrated from the postwar occupation
forces to the jungles of Southeast Asia.) But they gradually assumed a classic\ap£eai-ance
as systems were standardized and permanent structures built. Most permanent sites Were
windowless blockhouses surrounded by high chain link fences with a single,, gtiarided
aperture. \
and the base commander sometiDfies
economized on space by building the golf course in the antenna field. \
The intercept area was generally divided into smaller rooms. Manual Morsfe,
radioprinter, and voice modes usually had separate rooms, and at larger sites the Morse
mission was frequently subdivided into rooms by target. Operators in the early days ofteft
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The "spaghetti panel" RF distribution room at USM-1 (Vint Hill Farms)
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The Navy site on Adak Island in the Aleutians survived and prospered despite the cold and snow.
(b) (1)
|b) [3)-50 USC 403
(b) (3)-18 USC 798
fb) (3)-P.L. 86-36
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Barracks, USA-57, Clark AB, Philippines, early 1950s
These early "hootches" lacked air conditioning
(and just about everything else that would make them habitable).
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All services showed an interest in DF as a SIGINT technique, but the Navy was far
ahead of the other two. The Navy had begun experimenting with DF as a navigational aid
as early as 1906, and until the mid-1930s DF was developed for its short-range
navigational value. But by 1935 OP-20-G had got hold of DF for intelligence purposes, and
it gradually turned the Navy's primary interest toward strategic and tactical intelligence
applications. By 1941 the Navy operated twenty-two strategic DF stations, organized into
Atlantic, West Coast, Mid-Pacific, and Asiatic nets. In addition, the Navy had found that
the British had invented effective shipboard DF systems (something the U.S. Navy had yet
to accomplish) and began buying these systems from the British.
.(b) (1)
(b) (3)-50 USC 403
(b) (3) -IB USC 798
(b) {3J-P.L. B6-36
SIGINT Goes Airborne •
Even by the end of World War II, the HF spectrum was becoming very crowded, and
the Germans were beginning to experiment with VHF communications. Both the British
and Americans flew airborne intercept missions against VHF targets during the latter
stages of the war.
Eighth Air Force, concerned about the possibility of a German march into the VHF
spectrum, began to ins tall recorders and receivers set to pretuned frequencies on som e of
their strategic aircraft ~ iThis
they referred to as their "airborne Y Service." General "Hap" Arnold of the Army Air
Force directed a crash program to develop a dedicated airborne reconnaissance program,
replete with special schools, dedicated aircraft (a modified B-24) and designated
equipment. The AAF called the program "Ferret," and in early 1943 sent the first B-24s to
Adak in the Aleutians. In March of 1943 a Ferret aircraft flying out of Adak obtained
what was probably the first airborne intercept of a Japanese radar emission. 124
Spurred by the fortuitous capture of a Japanese radar on Guadalcanal in 1942, the
Navy put together a seat-of-the-pants ELINT collection effort in the Pacific. The program
did not have dedicated aircraft or specific units; the people involved just loaded their
intercept gear on any airframe that happened to be flying in the right area. The effort paid
off in June 1943, when Navy airborne intercept operators collected their first Japanese
radar emission. Despite this success, however, the Navy realized that this approach was
too haphazard, and in late 1943 a special reconnaissance unit was formed for the
Southwest Pacific Theater. This very early effort eventually became the VQ-1
squadron. 125
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JDR«CRfflJ^BRA
Following-tne war, the Air Force continued aerial reconnaissance against the
By 1947 the Army Air Force already had a rather elaborate postwar Ferret
program in both the Far East and Europe. The AAF requested ASA assistance in placing
COMINT intercept aboard, but at the time ASA displayed little interest. 126
ft) (1)
{bf(3)-50 USC 403
(b) (3>vlB USC 798
(b) (3) -EM. 85-36
BLUE SKY
Postwar comint airborne collection, however, developed from the Korean War rather
than from the Soviet threat. In 1952 Air Force Security Service became concerned about
reports that North Korean pilots were using the VHF spectrum for GCI communications.
As their intercept of HF GCI communications was beginning to dry up, this seemed
plausible and led to the establishment of a survey site on Cho Do Island. Cho Do definitely
proved the existence of VHF GCI communications, and this finding boosted an embryonic
USAFSS program to build a COMINT collection aircraft using an RB-29 as the platform. 127
But the, p eople in the Far East were not wil ling to wait for a long-range fix. The
commander of f | working with Far East Air Force,
initiated an in-theater effort which they called Project BLUE SKY. The idea was to seize
whatever platform was available - this proved to be a C-47. It was modified by the
addition of collection equipment and antennas formed up into a single intercept position
and was launched into a series of trial orbits. Although there was plenty of VHF to be had,
the orbit, because of requirements to be able to communicate with the ground station, was
far from ideal, and the initial trials were only moderately successful. The Air Force
adjusted the orbit, but results were still mixed because the wire recorder produced
scratchy, almost unintelligible voices.
After the armistice in 1953, coverage requirements became even more pressing, and
an additional VHF position was added. Results were better, but aircraft maintenance
problems, equipment failures and lack of qualified transcribers on the ground prevented
the program from fully realizing its potential. By 1958, however, BLUE SKY had expanded
by the addition of three more C-47s, and the program continued until 1962, when all C-47s
. were replaced by USAFSS RC-130s. 128
Peripheral Reconnaissance
The reconnaissance program of which BLUE SKY was a part came to consist of a
bewildering variety of programs operated by American military services.
Most of the missions were peripheral to the Soviet Bloc nations, and to those missions some
rather strict rules applied. But some parts of the program apparently dealt with deliberate
overflights. In the very early days, the penetration missions in Eastern Europe were for
the purpose of unloading tons of propaganda leaflets. As time went on, however, CIA radio
broadcasts substituted for more intrusive measures, and the overflights, turned toward
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intelligence collection. The best known of the latter were the U-2 overflights which
originated in the mid-1950s. Even when actual penetrations went out of favor, SAC
continued to fly "exciter flights" along the periphery, nudging the boundaries of the Soviet
air defense system to actually stimulate reactions and get them to turn on their
equipment. 129
By the early 1950s the Soviet Union had built a capable air defense system. It was
deficient in high-altitude aerial intercept capability, but the Soviets had an outstanding
radar detect ion system, beg inning originally with American lend-lease equipment. And
as American
tireraft -began playing vrith their Mfd^ (b)(3) so usc403
coming up after them.
The ensuing twenty years were marked by repeated border incidents, both aerial and
naval. A study by NSA in 1986 documented 126 incidents, 81 of them occurring during the
1950s. The peak year, 1952, was marked by nineteen incidents, including the downing of
an RB-29 in the Sea of Japan on 13 June, the first SIGINT aircraft shot down during the
Cold War (and the first loss of life by USAFSS intercept operators).
The Soviets and their allies became hypersensitive to peripheral reconnaissance, and
on occasion they acted "trigger-happy." In some cases, such as the shootdown of a USAF
photo mapping mission north of Japan in 1954, Soviet radars showed the American
aircraft in Soviet territory. In other cases, especially in the Berlin air corridors, Soviet
pilots showed a predisposition to fire at an Allied aircraft no matter which side of the
border it was on. Some missions were shot down; others were simply fired on or harassed
by "buzzing."
Although there is no direct evidence for it, it appears very likely that the pattern of
peripheral reconnaissance employed by the U.S. and its all ies exacerba ted an already
touchy situation and led to more i ncidents. As Table 5 shows| [ of the incidents
were c learly aerial reconnaissa nce J and of thel
| R econnaissance incidents^ iTteconnaisi
_ econnaissance
CPAs (closest point of approach) were frequently within a few..miles of the twelve-mile
limit and often paralleled the border ait that distance for many miles. To the Soviets, this
must have appeared as a taunt. The SAC exciter flights were the most provocative by far.
This was made worse by the inherent inaccuracy of radar, which sometimes placed the
Allied reconnaissance aircraft closer to the Soviet border than the aircraft's navigator
believed to be the case. Into this volatile mix came the Soviet bloc fighter pilot, who had no
way of knowing exactly where he was relative to the international boundary.
(b)(3)-P.L. 86-36
(b)(1)
(b)(3)-50 USC 403
(b)(3)-P.L. 86-36
HANDLE VIA TALENT KEYHOLE COMINT CONTROL 0Y0TEM0 JOINTLY
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DOCID: 3188691
itb) (l)
= (b) (3)-50 USC 403
i'|(b) (31-P.I,. 86-36
'fbK(l)
(B) (3>-50 USC 403
(b)''(,3)-p":'L-,....86-36
Table 6
Summary of Incidents by Type, 1949-1985
Type Number/
Non-SIGINT aerial reconnaissance
Other military
Commercial/private air
Military ship
22/
56/
is
Commercial ship (Mayaguez)
The number and pattern of peripheral reconnaissance flights dver the years, and the
nationalist sensitivities of the Communist nations, produced a lively time. Some of; the
shootdowns became international incidents which heightened the' Cold War tensions and
seriously affected international diplomacy. 130 j
All three services developed their own aerial reconnaissance programs, each using
different types of aircraft. Of the three, USAFSS had the largest program. Security
Service began laying plans as early as 1948, but it was not given the go-abead from USAF
until August 1950. Originally USAFSS hoped to use the C/47 as an iirframe, andUt
actually tested that aircraft and a C-54. USAFSS decided on £he RB-50, k modification iof
the B-29, as its long-range airframe, but none was available', and in the' early 1950s the
command used an RB-29 as an interim measure. The single R B-29 went operational in tlie
Pacific in 1954, flying out of but this was' never more than
an experiment. AFSS finally ended up with a group often RB-50s in 1956, and by the fall
of 1957 all ten were distributed - five to Asia and five to Europe. The program was a joint
effort between AFSS and the theater commanders, who operated thej front end of the;
planes. In the early years of the program, only the back-end crew was CQMINT cleared. Allj
positions were under local control, and tasking was done by USAFSS with little or no NSA!
input. 131 | i
The Navy program developed from the early VQ-1 and VQ-2 sqpadrons originally i
established in World War II. VQ-1 was originally based at Sangley Point Naval Station in
the Philippines, flying P4M Mercators, P2V Neptunes, and A3D Sky warriors. In 1955 the
In Europe the SIGINT reconnai ssance mission, VQ-2, evolved out of a W orld War II naval
unit at Port Lyautey, Morocco. ^
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(b) (3)-P.L. 36-36
i(b) (1)
/(b) (3) -50 USC 403
i (b) (3J-P.L. 86-36
TJJ&SECR6T Up/fBRA
| | RB-5f
When converted for reconnaissance use, the World War n B-29 was renamed the RB-50.
The SAC Ferret program continued i n jthe postwar years with only minimal
involvement by the cryptologic comriiunity. f|
By Mte summergof 1951, both AFSS and AFSA had become
interested in the program, and by' September thjb plans were expanded to includef
J
The Origins of Advisory Warning
The AFSS unit at
by how renamed!"
realized tha t they
leld in their hands information that could save an aircraft from being shot down.
JJIn early 1952
Jworked out a plan to warn aircraft
in i mminent danger, by passing ft coded warning to the Air Control and Warning (AC&W)
sites They wrote down their plan into a document which they
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/5(b) (1)
'i'(b) (3)-50 USC 403
1(b) (3)-P.L. 86-36
called Project BITTERSWEET and sent it to USAFSS for approval. In May 1952 AFSS
approved the plan for temporary implementation,
details of the new warning procedure wer0 still being worked out when,
on 13 June, an RB-29 SIGINT collection flight was shot down oyer the Sea of Japan. The two
AFSS operators who were killed might have been saved ha<d; a system been in place; the
event added a real sense of urgency to this, the earliest advisory warning plan in American
SIGINT history.
At this point bittersweet got bogged down in t he tangled thicket of COMINT,
classifications. The problem revolved around the possiblem \
/ / I USmB approve the ITRAFSS advWy
warning plan for the Far East, but LSIB was reluctant t<? go along except in a war zone
(i.e., Korea). / i
It appears that at least one version of the plan was gweh interim approval by USCIB,
and a former USAFSS operator claims that it was actually implemented in the early 1950s
for at least one mission. Various modifications were intr^dticed to make it more palatable,
such as the use of bogus messages disguised as warning tdiessages by AC&W units.
In 1956 President Eisenhower, concerned over thef mimber of incidents and loss of
reconnaissance aircraft, directed that positive action be taken to remedy the situation.
The only change that resulted was the implementation bf a Navy warning program in the
Far East, which contained certain safeguards, chief aiaoig these being the initiation of
"blind" (unacknowledged) broadcasts. Through the summer of 1958, there existed no
universal advisory washing program. 133
The RC-130 Shootefown 11
The RB-50 prbgram lasted only a few years. Tne aircraft were old and difficult to
maintain and had room for only five positions. The success of AFSS collection against the
growing VHF problem led to a new program on thi hefels of RB-50s, in which the new
McDon nell-D ouglas C-130 would be converted to a /collection platform. The C-130 had
room foi | p ositions, could fly longer and higher, andjbeing new, had few maintenance
pro blems. AFSS planned for a fleet of | | in e&ch theater, to begin in 1958. The
first | [ went to Europe, and in September AFSS, in A ssociation with USAFE, began to
fly trial reconnaissance missions inl [areas 134
HANDLE VIA TALEtiT K.E11IOLE OOMINT CONTROL 0Y0TEM3 JOINTLY
MOT BELEASADLE TO FOItEIQK 1 i ATIOHALQ
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RC-130
Then disaster struck. On 2 September 1958 an RC-130 on its initial flight out of
Adana strayed over the border and was shot down. Two pairs of MIG-15s (or 17s; there was
not enough evidence to determine which) attacked the reconnaissance aircraft in waves in
a well-coordinated operation which left no room for doubt that their intent was
destruction. The voice tapes were as dramatic as they were damning. (See p. 146.)
The Soviets said nothing, so the State Department on 6 September sent a note to the
Soviet government requesting information on an unarmed C-130 carrying a crew of
seventeen which had disappeared during a flight from Adana to Trabzon, Turkey. Finally,
on the 12th the Soviet embassy in Washington replied that the missing transport had
crashed in Soviet Armenia, killing six crew members, but that Moscow had provided no
information about an additional group of eleven. An exchange of diplomatic notes over the
next ten days shed no further light on the missing eleven bodies, so on 21 September the
State Department admitted that they knew the aircraft had been shot down and appealed
for information on the rest of the crew on humanitarian grounds. The Soviets replied that
they considered the flight to have been an intentional violation of their borders but made
no reference to the involvement of fighter aircraft or a shootdown.
HANDLE VIA TALENT KEYHOLE COMINT CONTROL SYSTEMS JOINTLY
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145
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T^E^ECREfur^RA
PBS
[pilot billet suffix]
582
201 to 218
201
201
CONVERSATION
The target is a large one Roger
Attack! Attack! 218, attack.
I am attacking the target
Target speed is 3000, 1 am flying with it.
It is turning toward the fence [i.e. , border].
201 The target is banking It is going
toward the fence. Attack!
21 & Yes, yes, I am attacking.
[missing] The target is burning
[missing] The tail assembly (b% is falling off) the
target.
[missing] Look at him, he will not get away, he is
already falling.
[missing] Yes, he is falling (b% I will finish him off)
on the run.
[missing] The target has lost control, it is going
down.
A crew of seventeen men, including eleven USAFSS airmen and a front-end crew of six,
was lost.
In October the Soviets produced the bodies of the six members of the front-end crew,
but the bodies of the eleven USAFSS airmen were never turned over; and this strange
circumstance produced a spate of conspiracy theories regarding the possible capture and
long-term incarceration, not to mention forceable interrogation, of the COMINT crew. The
evidence of the voice tapes makes it quite clear that no one could have escaped the fiery
crash in a mountainous region of the Caucasus, but what happened to the bodies remains a
mystery to this day. 135
In November, after more than two months of Soviet "stonewalling," Deputy Under
Secretary of State Robert Murphy summoned Soviet ambassador Mikhail Menshikov to
his office, told him he had the voice tapes of the shootdown, and said he would play them
immediately. Menshikov declared that he was not a technician and walked out of the
office. In January of the following year, Vice President Nixon and Secretary of State
HANDLE VIA TALENT KEYHOLE COMINT CONTROL BYSTEM3 JOINTLY
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Dulles protested the Soviet attitude on the shootdown to First Deputy Chairman of the
Council of Ministers Anastas Mikoyan, but their representations were again brushed
aside. Out of patience, the administration on 5 February released copies of the tape to the
New York Times, which published them on page one. This deliberate leak of COMINT had
already been placed before USCIB, which had concurred, as had the British. 139
The downing of the RC-130 had immediate and serious consequences. USAFE
grounded the entire RC-130 fleet, and Headquarters USAF requested a complete review of
the ACRP program worldwide. USAFSS produced statistics designed to prove the
effectiveness of the program when compared with ground collection sites, and by mid-
October the flight ban had been lifted. As part of its review, USAFSS also investigated the
possibility that the aircraft was meaconed (intentionally lured over the border) by Soviet
navigational facilities. This possibility added to the conspiracy theories surrounding the
fate of the RC-130, but it was largely contradicted by the internal evidence of the study
which showed that three navigational beacons in the area, two of them in the Soviet
Union, were all operating on virtually the same frequency. Thus, the aircraft very likely
homed on the wrong beacon and pulled itself off course. 137 Although President Eisenhower
himself believed it to have been a deliberate meaconing incident, it was more likely a
navigational error on the part of the SAC crew.
(to (lj
(b) (3)-5'0 USC 403
(b) (31-P.l. 86-36
Advisory Warning Is Implemented
The downing of the RC-130 decided the advisory warning issue. USAFSS gave its
units immediate authorization to man the heretofore unmanned manual Morse position
aboard the RC-130s for internal advisory warnin g. And the long-stalled plans for the
]got untra cked. By 1961 US AFSS and
applying to
provision of warning „ „
SAC had implemented a limited advisory warning program!"
their own reconnaissance aircraft. In 1963 this was merged into a national program
encompassing all peripheral reconnaissance aircraft, a JCS plan named WHITE WOLF. 138
The construction of the super-site s in the 1950s resulted in an intercept system that
was increasingly effective in its ability
2 shootdown; (See p. 148)- -But since
By 1960, USAFSS demonstrated a high leve l of competence to
Iduring the U-
HANDLE VIA TALENT KEYHOLE COMINT OONTItOL 0YQTEM3 JOINTLY
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TQE-SECffffllMfiRA
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communications in the 1950s.
(b) (1)
(b) (3)
OGA
(b) (1)
(b) (3)-50 USC 403
(b) (3)-P.L. 86-36
TheRB-47Shootdown
As time went on, progressively fewer reconnaissance aircraft were shot down, but
those that were took on a heightened diplomatic importance. Surely the most signficant
was the 1 May 1960 shootdown of the U-2 piloted by CIA's Francis Gary Powers. (This
shootdown will be treated in detail in a separate section.) Second only to that, however,
was the shootdown o f an RB-47 ELINT mission over the Bare nts Sea on 1 July 1960. The
and proceeded on its charted
aircraft took off from ^
course in the Barents, until it was intercepted by a covey of Soviet fighters. As the aircraft
paralleled the Murmansk coast, two Kilp'Yavr fighters intercepted it, and at least one
seriously damaged aircraft
After a twenty-minute struggle, the plane crashed in the icy
the waters alive by a Soviet trawler, but the other four died.
Coming as it did only two months after the U-2 incident, it presented Soviet premier
Nikita,Khrushc.hev with another opportunity to heat up the Cold War. After waiting a
few days to see what the Eisenhower administration would say, the Soviet leader went on
the attack, revealing that th ey had shot down the plane and were holding the two
survivors in Lubvanka Prison.! " '
In the Oval Office, Eisenhower worried about the diplomatic and political implications
of peripheral reconnaissance and asked his military advisors if it was worth it. General
Nathan Twining of the Air Force delivered a ringing defense of the program, and he
convinced Eisenhower to keep the airplanes flying. But the president directed that the Air
Force find faster reconnaissance aircraft so that the Soviets would have a more difficult
time shooting them down. The quest for a better aircraft eventually led to the SR-71
program. 1,10
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TOP§ECRE?Ul^BRi
BRA
(b) (1)
(b) (3)-50 USC 403
(b) (3)-P.L. 86-3S
During the Oval Office review of the perip heral reconnaissance program, the Air Force
revealed the extent of the program in 1960. I " ]
SAC had two strategic
/reconnaissance wings flying worldwide missions,/
/ / In Europe the COMINT
1/ aircraft (mostly RC-130s) were operated by USAFE, which seemed to be getting all the
newest and best aircraft and collection gear, in line with Eisenhower's expressed desire to
I (The pr omised nine RC -130s had evidently not yet
arrived.) Th e Navy had a naval air squadron at\ ^e quipp ed with smaller naval
patrol craft,
operated an ai rborne collection unit trom|
operating from
and the Marines
special naval unit
.. As for the fate of the RB-47 flyers, Khrushchev kept them in Lubyanka until after the
change of administration and then returned them as a cynical olive branch to the newly,
elected President Kennedy a few days after his inauguration. Kennedy met the released
flyers at Andrews Air Force Base and, to flaunt his Cold War sympathies, had them to the
White rjouse for coffee. 142 If Khrushchev hoped to use the reconnaissance program to curry
favor, he failed. Kennedy was even more fervently anti-Communist than Eisenhower.^=-"""'
'(b) (1)
(b) (3)
...Notes'...
(b) (1)
(b) (3) -50 USC 403
(b) (3J-18 USC 798
(b) (3)-P.L. 86-3S
history office.
Tliie History of SIGINT in the Central Intelligence Agency, 1947-1970," October 1971, CIA
JVol il, 2.
3. CCH Series VI.D.1.1.
4. The be st, and virtually the only, body of information on NSA's early organization is a manuscript bj
available in the Center for Cryptologic History.
5. George Howe working papers, History of the Directorate, in CCH Series VI.D.l .2.
6. Brownell Committee report. ""
7. "Report on Intelligence Activities in the Federal Government, Prepared for the Commission on Organization of
the Executive Branch of the Government by the Task Fbree.on Intelligence Activities, [the Hoover Commission
Report]," App. 1 , Part 1 : The National Security Agency, May 1 955; in CCH Series VI.C.l .8. j
8. Classification Act of 1949, amended 24 Oct. 1951. See also file on manpowerand personnel strengths in CCH
Series VI.E.1.4. ' |
9. Robertson Report, in CCH series VLX.l .6.
(b) (3)-P.L. 8S-36
HANDLE VIA TALENT KEYHOLE COMINTCONjEB©irSTSTEMS JOINTLY
NOT RELEASABJUftWFCREIG^NATIONALS
149
TOPSE
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/(b) (3J-P.L. 86-36
/(b) (1)
(b) (3)
OGA
10. "NSA Review of the U S. Cryptologic Effort, 195 2-54," in CCH Se ries Vl.EE.1.3.; interview, Louis W.
Tordella, 28 June 1990,by Robert Farley, NSA OH8-9ujj | "Glimpses of a Man: The Life of Ralph
J. Canine," Cryptologic Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 2, Summer 1987; Burns, The Origins of the National Security
Agency, 61.
11. Interview with Abraham Sinfcov by Arthur Zoebelein j~ ~| Dale Marston and Sam Snyder, May
1979, NSA OH 2-79 1 hrough 4-79 1
12.
Teaming in AFSA/NSA, 1949-1960 " unpublished manuscript inCCH Series V.F.4.1.
13. "NSA Review of U.S. Cryptologic Effort. ...
14. Howe, "The Nan ative History of AFSA/NSA" Part V.
15. NSA/CSSArchives,ACC:10460,CBRI51.
16. Howe, "Narrative History," Part V.
17. NSA oral history with Hugh Erskine, by Vince Wilson, 1972; oral history with Dr. Robert J. Hermann, 2
September 1994, by Charles Baker and Tom Johnson, NSA OH 45-94. /
18. George F. Howe, "A History of U.S. Civilians in Field COMTNT Operations* 1953-1960," Cryptologic
Quarterly, Spring 1973, 5f9; and correspondence file in NSA/CSS Archives, ACC 26430, CBOM22.
19. NSA/CSS Archives, ACC 1664N, Gl 4-0207-7.
20. File of sample C#IIN^ Reports for 1948-1953, in CCH.Series VI.M.2.1.
21. CCH Series VI.m2.i.|
22. Production memo 37/53, in "COMINT Reporting Responsibilities, Reports and Translations," in CCH Series
VI.M.1.2. /II/
23. NSA 901 Publieati{raj3 Precedures Memo #6/(3 October 1953, in CCH Series VI.M.1.7.
24. See "Reporting Policy" memoes in CCH Series VI.M.1.7.
25. Hoover Commission/report.
26. The best, and practically the only,; 'comprehensive discussion of AFSA and NSA training in the 1950s is in
[ Training in AFSA/NSA, 1949-1960," unpublished 1961 manuscript in CCH Series V.F.4.1.
Unless indicated otherwise, the material in this section derives from the Bauer work:
27. AFSA SchUl Catalogue 1952, in CCH Series V.F.4.2.
28 " I / / f THistdrical Study: The Security Program of AFSA and NSA, 1949-1962," unpublished
manuscript ih/CCH Series X.H. 7. See also Interview with Herbert L. Conley, 5 March 1984, by Robert Farley,
NSA OH 1-$/
29. | h istorical Study: The Security Program "See also Interview, Cecil J. Phillips, 8 July, 1993, by
Charles Baker andTom Johnson, NSA OH 23-93, and written comments by David Boak, October 1994.
30. CCH Series VI.G.1.1.
31. | Ip istory ofSIGINT in CIA, V. Ill, 158.
32. | | »The Security Program..."
33. Ibid.
/Kb) (3J-P.L. BS-3S
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(b) (1)
(b) (3J-P.1. B6-36
(b) (3)-50 USC 403
(b) (3J-18 USC 798
1 jDOP«CRfruiy^RA
34. Hoover Commission Report.(VI.C.1.8.); ]NSA Review of U.S. Cryptologic Effort. . . (VI.EE.1.3.); Robert J.
Watson, "Consumer Liaison yiuts,1949-1957" April 1957, ACC 10684, CBRI 52; and "AFSS-NSA Relations,
October 1952-September 1954," V. I, USAFSS Official History available at Hq ALA, Kelly APB, San Antonio, Tx.
35. |
'Early BOURBQN - 1945: The First Year of Allied Collaborative COMINT Effort
against the Soviet Union," Cryptologic Quarterly, Spring 1994, 1-40.
36. CCH Series VI.EE.
in Support of COMINT,
,,[
'."cofll
SIGINT Directives,: 28 Sep 1992 NSA(P0443) paper; "Mechanization
ection of papers dated from 1954-1956, in CCH Series XII.Z.
37. "Mechanization in support of COMINT."
38. "Site Survey/Hearability Tests," in CCH SeriesVI.I.1.1.
39. George Howe, "Narrative History," Part V.
40. CCH Series V.A.28., and VI.M.1.5.
41. Letter, Canine to SCA chiefs, 14 June 1955, in CAHA, ACC 26418, CBOM 16.
42. CCH Series VI.M.1.5.
43. USAFSS History, "Historical Resume: Development and Expansion of USAFSS Capability in the Pacific
Area, 1949-1957," available at AIA hqs, Kelly AFB.
44. Memo fin MGen Samford (USAF) to Commander, ADC, 2 Mar 1954, in CCH Series VI.M.1.5; Robertson
Report in CCH Series VI.X.1.7.
48. Holtwick memo 13 June 1955, in CCH Series VI.P.2.1.
49. CCH Series VI.NN.1.1. and VI.NN.1.3; see also VI.P.2.2.
50. CCH Series VI.P.1.3.
51. Richard R. Ferry, "A Special Historical Study of the Organizational Development of United States Air Force
Security Service from 1948-1963," 1963, available at Hqs AIA, Kelly AFB, Texas.
52. Interview with John E. Morrison, 10 August 1993, by Charles Baker and Tom Johnson, NSA OH 24-93.
53. "A Brief History of AFEWC," May 1977, and "History of ACOM Tasking in the AFSCC, 1 July 1961-31
December 1964"; available at Hq AIA, Kelly AFB, Texas.
54. Interview with Lt Gen Gordon A. Blake, 19 April 1984, by Robert Farley, NSA OH 7-84.
HANDLE VIA TALENT KEYHOLE COMINT CONTROL SY3TEMS JOINTLY
NOT RELEADADLE TO FOREIGN NATIONALS 1
151
JO&SECfTEfijIvlBRA
DOCID: 3188691
•■'(b) (3J-P.L. 86-36
joasKRETtrraBRA"
(b) (1)
(b) (3)
OGA
58. Howe, "Narrative History."; CCH Series VI.H.H.12.11; "AFSS-NSA Relations, October 1952-September
1954, V. I, available at Hq AIA, Kelly AFB, Texas. , \\
59. NSACSS Archives ACC 37911, H03-0305-2; interview with Milton Zaslow, 14 %y 1993, by Charles Baker
and Tom Johnson, NSA OH 17- 93; interview with Louis TordeUa, 28 June 1990, by Charles Baker and Tom
Johnson, NSA OH 8-90. \\
60. See Hay S. Cline, The CIA under Reagan, Busk and Casey (Washington, D.C.: Acropolis Books, 1981), 78;
Robert L. Benson, "A History, 6f U.S. Communications Intelligen ce During World War II: Policy and
Administration," CCH manuscript pending publication, Chapt II, 14. J S | , Donovan and the CIA
(Washington, D.C.: CIA, .1981). i
61. See Benson, " History"; interview with Oliver R. Kirby, 11 June 1993, by Charles riaker, Guy Vanderpool,
ind David Hatch, NSA OH 20-93. \
62.
"A History ofSIGIITO in the Central Intelligence Agency, 1947-1070," Vol IV, App. M.;
CIA history staff.
63. CIA's early role in COMINT is covered i J
[throughout); in a second CIA history ';' b\
NSA OH 14-81.
01ine,"TheC'lA...* "
64. Interview with Frank Rowlett, various dates, by Henry F. Schorreck and
65. Interview with Louis W. Tordella, 28 June 1990, by Charles Baker and Tom Johnson, NSA OH 8-90.
66. Summary of CIA contributions to COMINT, 1975, in NSACSS Archives, ACC 27845Z, CBDC .53.
67. Undated memo in NSA/CSS Archives, ACC 19168, H20-0111-5.
ipril 1974; and in
71
.72,
iToHI.
/ol. II; NSACSS Archives, ACC 9136, Gll-0602-1; ACC 3042, G15-0508-4; ACC 9136, CBIB 26; Capt
George P. McGinnis, "The History of Applesauce," Spectrum, Winter 1973, 9-13.
73. See NARA, RG 457, SRH- 355.
74
76. ] "I nterview; Sinkov interview; Tordella .interview. ...
77]
(b) (1)
(b) (3) -50 .USC 403
(b) (3)-18 USC 798
(b) (3)-P.L. 86-36
DOCID: 3188691
'(b) (3)-P.L. 86-36
(b) (1)
(b) (3)
OGA
(b) (1)
(b) (3)-50 USC 403
(b) (3)-18 USC 798
(b) (3)-E.L. 86-36
JWSECBHHJTJfgRA
81. David Kahn, Hitter's Spies: German Military Intelligence in/World Warn (New York: MacMillan 1978)
429-42. '
82. Mary Ellen Reese, General Reinhard Gehlen: The CIA Connection (Fairfax, Va.: George Mason University
Press, 1990).
91. Eisenhower Library papers in CCH, Series XVI; ACC 17720, CBTE 18; ACC 4821, CBSB 57; ACC 2144,
CBSB 11; ACC 20645, CBJXJ 14; ACC 16392N, CBRG 23; ACC 19631, CBTL 11; ACC 1910B, CBTI 33; ACC
5559N, eBpp.25; ACC 26424, CBOM 22.
92 - l - Ppera&lA ~ The Berlin Tunnel, U.S. Cryptologic History, Special Series , Number 4
(Ft, Meade: NSA, 198% Vol; Ilj 1
"Newspaper Items Relating to NSA," in CCH Series VI.II.1.2.; Kirby interview;
93. Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets, 83.
94. Interview with Richard Bissell, Jr., by Dr. Thomas Soapes, 19 Nov 1976, CIA history staff.
95. "CIA-NSA Relationships . . . ,* GCH Series VI U.I.2.; Tordella interview.
96. Robertson Report, in CCH Series VI.G1:H; NSA/CSS Archives, ACC 29965, H01-0706-5
97. See Jones, The Wizard War: British Scientific Intelligence, 1939-1945 (New York: Coward, McCann and
Geoghegan, 1978).
98. Draft Robertson Committee report in CCH Series VI.X.1.7.
100. "Background to the Robertson Report: Potentialities of COMINT for Strategic Warning," in CCH Series
VI.X.1.7; Draft of Robertson Committee Report in CCH Series VI.X.17.; "ELIOT History and Background
HANDLE VIA TALENT KEYHOLE COMINTCONT£QI^S¥STEMS JOINTLY
NOT RELEAS^BJ^eTORETG^NATIONALS
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TOP SEC
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!b) (1)
(b) (3)
OGA
Papers," in CCH Series Vl.O.1.1.; Hoover Commission Report in CCH Series VI.C.1.8.; "History of the Electronic
Intelligence Coordinating Group, 1955-1958," in CCH Series VI.O.1.6.
101. NSA/CSS Archives, ACC 9092, CBIB 24; "Acquisition of COMINT Intercept Stations Overseas," in CCH
Series V.F.6.1.
1 1 6. Howe, "Narrative History," Part V, Ch. XXVI-XXX; Ferry, "Special Historical Study. . . "; "Synthesis of ASA
Programs, FY 53," in CCH Series VI.Q.1.14; NSACSS Archives, ACC 9092, CBIB 24; "History, Location aid
Photos of ELINT sites," in CCH Series VI.O.1.4.; "INSCOM: and its Heritage - a History," in CCH Series
VI.Q.1..15; MSgt William R. Graham, "Misawa - Air Base and City, " 1982.
' (b) (1)
(b) (3) -10 USC 130
(b) (3) -50 USC 403
(b) (3)-18 USC 798
HANDLE VIA TALENT KEYHOLE COMTNTCJiDCER©frS7STEMS JOINTLY
NOT RELEAaABfeBflTTPSREIGNNATIONALS
154
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s(b) (3)-P.L. 86-36
(b) (1)
(b) (3)-P.X. 86-36
(b) (3)-50 USC 403
(b) (3) -18 USC 798
119. "A Chronology of Significant EventSiin the History of Electronic Security Command, 1948-1988," 1990,
available at AIA Hq, Kolly AFB, Texas; Interview with Gordon W. Sommers by Millard R. Ellerson and James E.'
Pierson, January 1990, available at AIA Hqs.
120.
Series Vl.y.1.16.
article in I^CVA* Crjiptolog, Pall 1989; "INSCOM and its Heritage - a History," in CCH
122.
{
i
123.| /
"Radio Direction Finding in the U.S. Navy: The First Fifty Years,"
124. Don East (Capt, USN(R)^, "A history of U.S. Navy Fleet Air Reconnaissance, Part I: The Pacific and VQ-1,"
The Hook, Spring 1987, 16.;/ Oral interview with Samuel K. S. Hong, Dec. 9, 1986, by R. D. Farley, Honolulu,
Hawaii, NSA OH 40-86
125. East, 15-17
126
Joid BOURSON - 1947: The Third Year of Allied Collaborate COMINT Effort against
the Soviet Union," Cryptologie Quarterly, Vol. 13 No. 3. Fall 1994
127. William E. Burroughs, Deep Black: Space Espionage and National Security (New York: Random House,
1986), 58-9.; "A History of the USAFSS Airborne SIGINT Reconnaissance Program (ASRP), 1950-1977," in CCH
Series X J. j
;
128. "Analysis of AFSS Effort in the ijtorean Action," unpublished manuscript available in CCH Series V M.4.I.;
"A History of the USAFSS Airborne SIGINT Reconnaissance Program (ASRP), 1950-1977," 20 Sep 1977,
USAFSS history available in CCH Series X J.
129. See Buroughs Deep Black, 58-59, and Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets, 24.
130. The definitive study of reconnaissance incidents was done by NSA historian Donald Wigglesworth in an
unpublished stud y entitled "A Summ ary of Peacetime Hostile Air and Sea Actions 1949-1985," March 1986, in
CCH. In addition.1 Trecently published an article in the Cryptologie Quarterly ("Maybe You Had
to be There: The SIGINT on Thirteen Soviet Shootdowns of U.S. Reconnaissance Aircraft," Vol. 12 No. 2, Summer
1993, 1-44), which provides an excellent summary of the shootdown of reconnaissance aircraft.
131. "A History of the USAFSS Airborne Sigint Reconnaissance Program ..." Mary Holub, Jo Ann Himes,
Joyce Horns, and SSgt Kay B. Grice, "A Chronology of Significant Events in the History of Electronic Security
Command, 1948-1988," in CCH Series X.J.6.
132. East, "VQ-1. . . ," and East, "The History of U.S. Naval Airborne Electronic Reconnaisaance: Part Two, the
European Theater and VQ-2," The Hook, Summer 1987, 32-35.
133. "Analysis of AFSS Effort in the Korean Action," USAFSS history availahle in CCH Series V.M.4.I.; CBTJ
44, NSA/CSS Archives, ACC 19220; USAFSS, "A Special History of the Advisory Warning Program, July 1961-
December 1964," in CCH Series X.J.3.1.
134. USAFSS, "A History of USAFSS Airborne SIGINT Reconnaissance. . . ."
HANDLE VIA TALENT KEYHOLE COMIN T CON T R O L S¥bTH,Mb J UI1MTLV
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Chapter 4
The Soviet Problem
THE EARLY DAYS
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the
Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of central and eastern Europe
... all these famous cities lie in what' I might call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one
form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing
measure of control from Moscow.
Winston Churchill, 6 March 1 946
The end of World War II did not result in a large number of unemployed cryptologists.
That it did not was due almost entirely to the advent of the Cold War and an increasing
concern with what came to be called the Soviet Bloc. (In the 1950s, believing in a world-
wide Communist conspiracy, Americans called it the Sino-Soviet Bloc.)
Wartime cooperation with the Soviet Union began to break down in early 1945.
Through a series of late- war conferences among the Allies, it became clear to the West that
the Soviet Union did not intend to retreat from Eastern Europe at the end of the war. An
increasingly frustrated Roosevelt administration became less and less constrained about
public references to the rift with Stalin, but Roosevelt himself remained convinced up to
his death in April 1945 that the rift could be healed by diplomacy. His successor, Harry
Truman, did not share this optimism.
The administration moved to check Soviet expansionism abroad. As a result of strong
pressure, Stalin removed Soviet troops from Iran later in the year. Meanwhile, Greece was
faced with a USSR-inspired internal Communist threat, while neighbor Turkey faced an
external threat by Soviet divisions massed on its borders. Truman again faced down
Stalin, announcing the Truman Doctrine, a promise to come to the aid of countries in that
area faced with Communist subversion or external threats. Administration policy toward
the USSR hardened with the publication, in the magazine Foreign Affairs, of an article by
George Kennan, late deputy chief of mission in Moscow, postulating the Cold War doctrine
which became known as "containment."
The next year a democratically elected government in Czechoslovakia fell to a
Communist coup, and the new government became an effective satellite of the USSR.
Meanwhile, Soviet troops remained in Poland and East Germany, while Communist
governments took over in Hungary and the Balkans. In June 1948 Stalin tried to cut
Berlin off from the West, and Truman initiated the Berlin Airlift to resupply the city. The
HANDLE VIA TALENT KEYHOLE COMINT CONTROL 3Y3TEM8 JOINTLY '
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Truman administration also saw the Korean War as the first move in a Soviet-inspired
military offensive.
The Advent of BOURBON
American cryptology had dabbled with the Soviet problem over the years, with
indifferent success. Yardley, in his book The American Black Chamber, claimed to have
broken Soviet diplomatic codes. The truth is that, though Yardley's MI-8 worked Soviet
diplomatic traffic, only a single instance of success was ever recorded, and in that case the
transposition being attacked was based on the German language. 1
Friedman's Signal Intelligence Service obtained MI-8's traffic upon MI-8's demise in
1929 and made a brief, unsuccessful attempt to solve the codes. Then in 1931 a Soviet
espionage front posing as a trading company called AMTORG came under the glare of
Representative Hamilton Fish of New York, who subpoened some 3,000 AMTORG cables
from the cable companies in New York. Fish turned them over to OP-20-G, which, having
at the time only two cryptanalysts (Safford and Wenger), failed to solve them. The cables
were then transferred to SIS, which also blunted its spear. This was virtually the only
attempt at Sovcdiplomatic traffic by the services during the 1930s, and Friedman's people
doubted that any Soviet codes could be solved. 2
They were, in fact, wrong.
attack on Soviet military systems throughout the 1930s. The primary target was
COMINTERN (Communist International) traffic, | "~|
But when, in June of 1941, Hitler's army invaded Russia, the British allowed the Soviet \
problem to wither. GCCS made a brief attempt to turn the USSR into a COMINT Third \
Party, and even established an intercept site in Russia near Murmansk in 1941. The 1
dialogue came to a quick halt when the Soviets began inquiring into British success (b) pi-so use
against ENIGMA. In 1942, the Radio Security Service and the London Metropolitan Police 403
discovered an extensive Soviet illicit network in Great Britain, and Stewart Menzies, head
of British intelligence, directed that work be renewed against Soviet communications,
especially KGB, GRU, and COMINTERN nets likely to carry information of
counterintelligence value. 3
In the United States, SIS was collecting a small amount of Soviet traffic on a casual
basis as early as 1942. On 1 February 1943 the Army opened up a two-person Soviet
section. The inspiration for this effort was the Army's successful attack on Japanese
diplomatic communications, in which the Japanese discussed their efforts against Soviet
systems. The Japanese material gave SIS some handholds into Soviet systems. OP-20-G
came in later, opening both intercept and cryptanalytic study in July 1943. Because the
USSR was a wartime aliy, the effort was rigidly compartmented and known to only a few.
In August 1943 the Army and Navy cryptologists began cooperating on the new Soviet
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problem and, during 1943 and 1944, cooperatively worked a number of Soviet
cryptographic systems. 4
Meantime, the Navy, in order to collect Soviet naval traffic, had opened up an
intercept effort at Bainbridge Island in Washington State. Tightly controlled, it was
headed by Louis Tordella, later the deputy director of NSA. S
By the end of the war, both cryptologic organizations were mounting extensive efforts
against Soviet communications, despite the official designation of the USSR as an ally.
OP-20-G, concentrating on Soviet naval communications in the Pacific from Skaggs Island
and Bainbridge, employed 192 people, while ASA had almost 100. They had both been
surreptitiously training Russian linguists for a year.
But the effort was charged with political implications. Roosevelt was trying to
maintain the fragile alliance with the USSR and was being challenged on the left by
Henry Wallace, a potential political rival who felt the administration was anti-Soviet.
In this atmosphere Brigadier General Carter Clarke of the Army G-2 paid a visit to
Preston Corderman (chief, SIS) and Frank Rowlett several months before the end of the
war. Clarke said that he had received informal instructions - allegedly from the White
House - to cease any effort against the Soviet problem. It appeared that someone in the
White House had gotten word of the compartmented Soviet problem and had concluded
that it did not accord with the current diplomatic situation. (It was discovered years later
that the White House staff was in fact infiltrated by a single Communist or "fellow
traveler," who may have been in a position to know about the Army program.) Clarke did
not desire that the program be closed, and in fact SIS (soon to be renamed ASA) received a
steady increase in resources for the program. 6
In June 1945, with the war coming to an end, the Navy proposed formal collaboration
with the Army on the Soviet problem, which was then referred to as the RATTAN project.
The Army wanted a more integrated effort, but they eventually agreed to organize under
the more decentralized Navy scheme.
At the same time, ANCIB proposed to LSIB that their cooperation against Germany,
Italy, and Japan now be extended to include the USSR. The Americans proposed that- the
cooperation be fully as close as it had been during the war. This included sharing all
details, including the status and method of cryptanalytic attack, and the exchange of raw
traffic and code/cipher recoveries. The British agreed, and in August the two sides arrived
at an unwritten agreement predicated on an understandi ng arrived at in June betwe en
Rear Admiral Hewlett Thebaud, chairman of ANCIB, an d] for
LSIB. This historic agreement extended bilateral cooperation into the Cold War and
established the basis for what became known as the BRl/SA Agreement. The two sides
agreed to call the new project BOURBON. 7
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During the mid-1940s the two sides mounted a relentless attack on the wartime
generation of Soviet ciphers. The British provided much of the cryptanalytic expertise, the
Americans most of the processing capability. They used whatever material they could get
their hands on, including information on the Japanese cryptanalytic attack. TICQM
debriefings of German cryptologists also gave the two partners useful information about
Soviet systems.
VENONA
Alone and compartmented, the effort against Soviet diplomatic traffic had continued
throughout World War II. In the long run this tightly held problem would have the
greatest impact on American history in the postwar period and would become the most
widely known. It was called VENONA.
In the early years of the war, the Army received incidental Soviet diplomatic traffic,
most of it through its arrangements with the cable companies, which carried a large bulk
of common-user communications. Since New York was the terminal for the transatlantic
cable, Soviet diplomatic traffic was routed through that city. The Army arranged with the
cable companies to get copies of most of the cables that the Soviets were sending, both to
and from Washington and, more important, to and from AMTORG. Much of this traffic
was believed to be KGB-related.
In 1943, ASA had mounted a secret effort to attack these communications, but they
looked impossible. They were produced from codebooks enciphered by means of one-time
additive tables. Assuming no re-use, there was no point in continuing. But ASA was not
assuming anything, and Lieutenant Richard T. Hallock of ASA directed that his small
section machine punch and process the beginnings and endings of some 5,000 messages to
test for depths. In October 1943, ASA found the first indication that the additive pads
may have been used more than once, a find which was to change the history of the postwar
world. 9
Hallock and his small band of cryptanalysts had found what is called "manufacturer's
re-use" caused by the first German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. The KGB's
additive pad generating facility produced two sets of some pads, presumably because of the
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pressures associated with the rapid German advance toward Moscow. These were
disseminated to widely separated KGB organizations, which were unaware that they had
duplicate pads. ASA never found depths of more than two, and at that depth, decryption
was only theoretically possible but practically a back-breaking job, assuming one ever got
hold of the depths themselves.
Months went by, but finally ASA cryptanalysts, in November of 1944, were rewarded
with their first depth. This was followed by others, and it appeared that they might be able
to eventually break some traffic. But the job still looked gargantuan.
While one section worked on identifying depths, another worked on the underlying
codebooks that were slowly emerging from under the additive key. This effort was led by a
reclusive linguist and bookbreaker named Meredith Gardner. A Texan originally,
Gardner had obtained a Master of Arts in German from the University of Texas and had
been a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin before going to work teaching at the
University of Akron. He had joined SIS in 1942, and although he began in the German
section, he quickly switched to Japanese, where he proved his linguistic gifts by picking up
this extremely difficult language in just three months. At the end of the war, he switched
again, this time to the Soviet problem and spent his first several months learning Russian.
In December 1946, he had only recently emerged from language school when he made a
major break into a KGB message, decrypting and translating a digraphic sequence of a
1944 message from New York to Moscow sending English text. Gardner found that the
KGB used the code values for "spell" and "end spell" anytime they needed to encrypt a
foreign word or other term that did not appear in the codebook. It was these two values
that yielded many of the early breaks.
In December 1946, Gardner broke a portion of a KGB message that listed American
scientists working on the atomic bomb. This message turned heads. Why would the KGB
be interested in such information? ASA immediately turned the translation over to the
Army G-2, and Carter Clarke had General Omar Bradley, the Army chief of staff, briefed
on the message. G-2 expressed a continuing interest in any messages that contained like
information. 10
Through the war ASA had proceeded virtually unaided, but after World War II several
outside factors speeded the tortuously slow process of additive key diagnosis and recovery
and bookbreaking. The first was the defection of a Soviet GRU cipher clerk, Igor
Gouzenko, from the Soviet embassy in Ottawa, in September 1945. The case caused a
sensation because Gouzenko indicated the existence of a possible Soviet effort against the
American atomic research effort. 11
Because Gouzenko worked with communications, Frank Rowlett of ASA was invited to
interrogate him. During his sessions Rowlett learned much about the way the KGB
codebooks were put together and how the additives were used. This information cut time
off ASA's cryptanalysis effort. 12
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A second outside source of information was a 1944 FBI burglary of AMTORG, during
which the agents carried off stacks of unenciphered messages with their cipher text
equivalents. In 1948 the FBI turned over this bonanza to Gardner, who began comparing
the traffic against transmitted messages. In this way he could identify some of the code
group meanings because he had both plain and cipher texts. 13
A third outside source was called "Stella Polaris," a Byzantine story which began in
the early days of World War II. When, in June 1941, Germany invaded the USSR, the
Finns went to war against the Soviets, siding with Germany against their mortal enemy.
On 22 June a Finnish unit, presumably security police, entered the Soviet consulate in the
Finnish town of Petsamo, near the Russo-Finnish border. Here they found the Soviet
communications people frantically destroying cryptographic material. Some of it was
burned beyond use, but certain of the codebooks were recovered more or less intact. These
codebooks were property of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB - they were, in fact, the
same codebooks which, in the mid-1940s, Meredith Gardner was working on.
The charred codebook fragments were turned over to the Finnish COMINT service,
headed by one Colonel Hallamaa. By 1944 the war was not going well for Germany, and
Hallamaa became concerned about an impending Soviet invasion of his homeland. He
arranged to smuggle the contents of the Finnish COMINT archives, including the Petsamo
trove, to Sweden, where photocopies were made. Copies of the Petsamo materials wound
up in the hands of the Swedish, German, and Japanese COMINT organizations. Along with
the documents went Hallamaa and the entire Finnish COMINT service.
At some point information got out to the newspapers, and the fact that Finnish
intelligence people were working hand in glove with the Swedes became public knowledge.
Knowing that the KGB was almost certainly after him, Hallamaa and most of his people
fled to France, where, after the war, they worked nominally with the French intelligence
people, but were actually controlled, according to some sources, by the British. So it was
that the British got their own copies of the Petsamo codebooks. At the same time (1945) an
OSS representative began working with Hallamaa, and the OSS, too, received its own
copies (although not, perhaps, a complete set).
The codebooks eventually made their way to ASA and AFSA. Since by this time a
number of intelligence services had copies, which source did AFSA get? In the days after
the war, a TICOM team obtained a copy from the Germans, and it was this set that first
made it all the way to Meredith Gardner's office. Shortly thereafter AFSA began
obtaining Petsamo materials from the British under the codename Source 267 and may, at
some point, have received copies from OSS/CIG, but these were no more than duplicates of
materials they already had. 14
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The Stella Polaris find did not break the
KGB codes. They were frag mentary and
pertained only to one version,
jBut they did shorten the time
Wesley Reynolds served as a link
in the NSA-FBI liaison and later
became NSA's chief of security.
involved in the laborious bookbreaking
process by providing Gardner with "models"
of Soviet codes on which to base his own
recoveries.
After reading some of Gardner's earlier
translations showing the scope of KGB
operations in the United States, Carter
Clarke, the Army G-2, called on the FBI for
help. His first contact was in July 1947;
it was with Wesley Reynolds, the FBI liaison
with Army G-2. Reynolds had joined the FBI
in New York in 1941 after several years of law practice with his father and older brother.
He had begun liaison work with G-2 in 1942, and ten years later jumped ship to NSA,
where he became NSA's first professional chief of security.
Reynolds concluded that VENONA could turn out to be.a full-time job, and he appealed
to Mickey Ladd, head of the FBI counterintelligence operations, for a dedicated agent.
Ladd assigned one Robert Lamphere, who, like Reynolds, had joined the bureau in 1941.
Lamphere had worked virtually his entire career in counterintelligence, mostly in New
York. He knew the territory, but he did not yet know ASA and Meredith Gardner.
What ensued was one of the most remarkable partnerships in intelligence history.
The shy, brilliant Gardner, speaker of half a, dozen languages, brought to the relationship
his ability to break codebooks and produce translations of extremely difficult material.
Lamphere brought his detailed knowledge of KGB operations and personalities, along
with his contacts within the counterintelligence community. Together they worked over
the fragmentary texts of old KGB messages.
One of the first products of ..this marriage of convenience came in 1948. It was a
decrypt of a message sent in 1944, in which the KGB reported on the recruiting efforts of
an unnamed spy. Using the FBI counterintelligence file, Lamphere identified t wo possible
candidates:
an employee of the Navy Ordnance Department, and
an engineer working on airborne radar for Western Electric. Both had been under FBI
suspicion for possible Communist liaisons. Neither was ever brought to trial, but it was
the first fruit of the Gardner-Lamphere relationship.
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The next lead was a 1948 translation
of a verbatim quote on the progress on the
Manhattan Project given by one Klaus
Fuchs, a respected British atomic
scientist, also sent in 1944. The
information became urgent when, in
September of 1949, the USSR exploded its
first atomic bomb. It became clear
through the COMINT information provided
by Gardner where the scientific
information for the USSR's atomic bomb
project was coming from. Fuchs was
arrested in late 1949, confessed, and was
convicted of espionage. Just as
important, he led the FBI to a contact in
America, Harry Gold, and Gold, in turn,
led to the unravelling of an entire
network of spies at work for the USSR.
Klaus Fuchs
As the atomic spy network was undone in 1950 and 1951, Lamphere played the
information now pouring in through counterintelligence work and confessions against the
AFSA KGB decrypts. Most important for Lamphere's subsequent work was an agent
covername, ANTENNA/LIBERAL, whose true identity, Julius Rosenberg of New York City,
was fully confirmed in June of 1950, based on a series of cascading confessions coming from
the network originally unearthed during the Fuchs interrogations earlier in the year.
(Gardner later contended that the original tentative identification of Rosenberg was
actually done by G-2 before Lamphere became involved.) 15
One of the most sensational spy trials was that of Alger Hiss, a top State Department
official who had traveled with Roosevelt to Yalta in 1945. Fingered originally by a KGB
defector, Walter Krivitsky, in 1941, Hiss was publicly named in 1947 as a spy by two
reformed Communists, Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers, before the House Un-
American Activities Committee. He was never taken to court for spying, but in January
1950 he was convicted of perjury for lying about his associations with Chambers, and he
served a prison term. Although the evidence in court was all assembled from testimony
and confessions, along with some circumstantial evidence produced by Chambers, VENONA
traffic from the 1945 period contained possible confirmatory evidence that Hiss was
probably a GRU asset. The covername ALES was identified in the March 1945 traffic as an
individual who flew to Moscow after the Yalta Conference. Hiss was identified as the
probable culprit based on the fact that there were only four other possibilities, including
the secretary of state himself. The VENONA traffic refers to an individual who could fit the
description of Hiss, which could confirm that Hiss was indeed a spy. 16
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Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (on right) shown with another accused spy, Morton Sobell
The most famous spy of all was Kim Philby, the British MI-6 liaison officer assigned to
work with the Americans on the VENONA project. VENONA also became the lever which
pried open the Philby spy ring, and Philby watched it all unfold. He kept to himself until,
in early 1951, the FBI went after one HOMER, the covername of a KGB agent identified
originally in VENONA traffic. HOMER, the FBI suspected, was actually one Donald
Maclean, a first secretary of the British embassy who, as part of his duties, was in charge
of the coderoom in Washington. As such, he had passed the text of certain Churchill-
Roosevelt messages to Moscow, and these appeared in decrypted VENONA traffic. Because
of his position as liaison with the Americans on VENONA, Philby knew the axe was about to
fall, and he warned Maclean of impending exposure. Maclean fled to Moscow with a fellow
spy, Guy Burgess, who had been posted to Washington with Maclean. Brought under
suspicion by Hoover's FBI, Philby resigned his post and in 1963 fled to Moscow himself. 17
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Kim Philby strikes a smug pose during a 1955 press conference
after a British investigation failed to definitely finger him as a Soviet agent.
All the readable venona messages which supplied information about U.S. spies were
transmitted by 1946 or earlier. Most of the decrypted traffic came from ASA's 1944-45
files and was not decrypted until the late 1940s and early 1950s. But exploitation efforts
continued for years and were not finally closed down until 1980. By then, the traffic being
worked was thirty-five years old. The reason for this long delay was simple. VENONA
translations were incredibly difficult, each one requiring approximately one man-year of
work.
The VENONA material played a key, although by no means exclusive, role in catching
the atomic spies and the Philby ring. Most of the evidence came from meticulous
counterintelligence work by the FBI, not from COMINT. VENONA frequently confirmed
what the FBI had suspected, but it never had to be used in court. All the prosecutions
stood solely on evidence gained from other sources. What, then, was its historical
importance?
First, VENONA provided the prod. Early VENONA decrypts revealed the scope and
direction of KGB operations. It confirmed that fragmentary information provided by
people like Krivitsky and Gouzenko, and public allegations by Elizabeth Bentley and
Whittaker Chambers, was precisely on target and had to be pursued. With VENONA in
hand, Lamphere got his marching orders.
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Second, it was the evidence that led to the arrest and confession of Klaus Fuchs, the
first atomic spy unmasked. Subsequent actions were taken based on an unravelling skein
of evidence provided by the conspirators themselves. One arrest led to a confession,
another arrest,. and still another confession. The investigation proceeded in whirlwind
fashion, gaining momentum as it roared around every corner. At that point VENONA
simply confirmed and solidified what the FBI had learned from its sources.
Third, it began the exposure of the Philby spy ring, surely Britain's most infamous
confrontation with traitors. Although the FBI was already onto Maclean, it might never
have proceeded further but for the bits of information that VENONA was unearthing. At
the very least, the ring would have operated months, if not years, longer before being
unmasked.
The guilt or innocence of Alger Hiss, the decision to execute the Rosenbergs, the
culpability of the Philby ring, the very existence of the atomic spy ring and what J. Edgar
Hoover called the "Crime of the Century" quickly acquired stark political overtones. They
got all mixed up in McCarthyism, and in the 1960s the New Left took up the mantle in
behalf of Hiss, the Rosenbergs, and a wide variety of others who, justly or unjustly, had
been hauled before the House Un-American Activities Committee and the McCarthy
hearings. In the early 1970s a National Committee to Re-Open the Rosenberg Case took
up the cudgels in behalf of the executed couple. Believing that the documents would prove
them right, they used the Freedom of Information Act to pry off the lid of the FBI
investigation and began publishing articles purporting to show how the FBI materials
proved that Hiss and the Rosenbergs were innocent. Then in 1983 two former true
believers, Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton, published a book entitled The Rosenberg File,
which showed that a dispassionate examination of the documents proved just the opposite.
What had they got hold of? It was FBI papers based on the VENONA translations.
Unknown to NSA, the FBI had released them through the FOIA process (a release which
led to a change in the way such FOIA requests are handled).
Not many people still believe in the innocence of the Rosenbergs. Even those who hold
firm to the belief that McCarthy's methods were wrong (and that encompasses most
Americans) understand that the KGB had done some serious spying. McCarthy so
sensationalized and distorted the anti-Communist campaign in the 1950s that an entire
era came into disrepute. The historical importance of VENONA is that this entire episode in
American history was not dismissed as a figment of someone's imagination. No matter
how lurid and disreputable portions of the anti-Communist campaign became, the spy
network can no longer be regarded as a fairy tale.
As for its long-term significance for cryptology, NSA learned several important
lessons. First, the difficulty of an effort is not an automatic disqualifier. VENONA was one
of the most intensely difficult projects that American cryptology has ever undertaken. The
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cryptanalytic effort was gargantuan. But the results would rock the foundations of post-
war America.
Second, it illustrated the absolute essentiality of cross-fertilization. COMINT without
counterintelligence was just as unthinkable' as counterintelligence without COMINT. Yet if
the effort had been undertaken during World War II, with the intense competition
between the military services and the FBI, it might have fallen on the rocks of secrecy, and
the atomic spies might never have been uncovered.
"Black Friday"
(AFSA had not yet been created, and /
there was no mechanism to resolve interservice security squabbles and investigate/
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But if one went looking for spies, there jtr&s no end
of possibilities. The most obvious suspects were those three miscreants, Philb^r, Burgess,
and Mac lean, who were in a position to know the general outlines of the American ] |
pttack on Soviet systems, even though they were unacquainted with the technical
details. j .,
But a very likely contributor was one of America's own. . William Weisbsind, who had
been working in ASA for the duration of the war and into the late ,1^40s, was later
discovered to have been a KGB agent. Weisband, whose story will be covered in more
detail in chapter 7, almost certainly provided information critical to the Soviet COMSEC
effort. He was the U.S. cryptologic effort's first traitor.
ASA and AFSA Turn to Radioprinter
As thef
source of/Soviet traffic. Through
Iproble m became more difficult, ASA turned gradually to a new
interrogations and later contacts with foreign
COMINT specialists, ASA had become aware that the Soviets had begun using radioprinter,
]
ASA /had very little intercept capability for such a sophisticated system, and early
intercepts were copied.onto undulator tape, whose readout was laborious and time-
consuming.
Confronting the same problem, NSG and ASA received a postwar allocation of
something over $200,000 to design and build intercept equipment./ Working in the
basement of Arlington Hall under the cafeteria, they began buildingP ''
positions whose output was punched paper tape onto which was also
printed the Cyrillic characters, a big improvement over undulator tape. (Printers were
then viewed as too expensive and their output too.bulky.) f
The outputs .were huge, and ASA and NSG were quickly flooded with Russian
language material. NSAers Jacob Gurin and | who headed up the
transcription effort, began hiring Russian linguists from a former OSS organization that
had been transferred to the State Department. They also began scouring college campuses
for linguists and set up language training at civilian universities.
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wave of the future.
THE SOVIET STRATEGIC THREAT
(b)Tl')
(b) [3J
The United States emerged from World War II with a lock on nuclear weapons
technology and strategic delivery systems. The Soviet Union represented a threat only
from the standpoint of a land war on the Eurasian landmass.
This enviable pinnacle of security did not last very long. On 3 September 1949, an Air
Force weather reconnaissance aircraft detected an unusually high concentration of
radioactivity over the North Pacific east of the Kamchatka Peninsula. The Soviets had
exploded a nuclear device. The timing was a shock. The intelligence community had
adjudged the Soviet program still several years away from actually exploding a device.
The arms race was on, and America's lead in nuclear technology seemed to be
disappearing. The U.S. exploded its first hydrogen bomb in 1952; the Soviets followed a
year later, another surprise to the intelligence community.
In 1953 American military attaches in Moscow observed Soviet strategic bombers in
apparent series production. If true, this would give the Soviets a delivery capability for
their newly acquired atomic weapons. Stuart Symington, senator from Missouri and
former secretary of the air force, fastened on this information to propound the famous
"bomber gap" thesis. This information was later proved wrong by early U-2
photoreconnaissance flights, but the public perception profoundly altered intelligence
priorities and led to an almost paranoid focus on Soviet strategic systems.
In 1956 Symington originated the "missile gap" controversy which was to influence
the presidential election of 1960. Symington was apparently being fed data from Air Force
sources that SAC believed the Soviets might have slipped ahead of the United States in
the development of strategic missile delivery systems. The launch of Sputnik in 1957
appeared to confirm Symington's contentions, and every failure of a U.S.-developed launch
system over the next several years just drove another nail in the lid. The concentration of
intelligence energies on the Soviet advanced weapons problem became fierce.
Printer seemed to be the;
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How It Began
The Soviet" missile program had originated in 1945 when a covey of German missile
scientists fell conveniently into Soviet hands. Working at Peenemunde on the North Sea
coast, this group had developed the VI and V2 missiles, the latter a true ballistic missile
capable of distances in excess of 200 miles. The captured scientists were hustled off to a
research institute in Bleicherode, East Germany, and then in 1946, amid great secrecy,
were transferred to the Soviet Union itself. They were first set up in a new Scientific
Research Institute 88 at Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea. Their first test center, established
in 1947, was at a remote desert site called Kapustin Yar, some 100 miles east of
Stalingrad.
The Germans labored in Kaliningrad, Kapustin Yar and other locations until 1950 or
1951. By that time the Soviets had themselves the rudiments of a missile program. They
had succeeded in replicating the V2 and a primitive indigenous missile, called the R-10,
had been been designed with German help. At that point the Soviets returned the
Germans to their homeland, where they brought the CIA up to date on the Soviet program.
None of the first Soviet rockets, designated R10-15, ever amounted to more than "designer
toys," but the most advanced, the R-15, was designed for a nuclear payload and was to
have a range of 3,700 statute miles. 20
Reports of Soviet missile development reached the Oval Office, and the president
demanded more information. But there were precious few assets to be had. In. the latter
days of Stalin's reign, the Iron Curtain completely closed off the Soviet Union from CIA
HUMINT penetration - they had no secret agents in the USSR. There was no photography,
the U-2 still being several years away. Virtually the only asset available was SIGINT.
, I In 1954 the
German scientists who had worked on the project told American intelligence about a
system of communications between the missile and its ground station, a derivative of a
system the Germans had developed at Peenemunde in World War II. It was a 16-channel
PPM system operating in the 60 MHz range that the Germans called MESSINA. The U.S.
intelligence community called it "telemetry. " 2l
'(b) (1)
(b) (3) -18 USC 798
(b) (3)-50 USC 403
(b) (3)-P.L. 86-36
HANDLE VIA TALENT KEYHOLE COMINT CONTROL 3Y3TEMB JOINTLY
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3188691
Missile fabrication and assembly area,
(b)(1) ... Kapustin Yar. This 1 959 U-2 photograph provided excellent
(b!(3)-50 USC 403 T™-"m~- =~-,™._,j«J
(b)(3)-P.L. 86-36 detailonarang.compl«|
HANOLE VIA TALENT KEYHOLE 00MINT CONTROL S YSTEMS JOINTLY
??0T RELEACABLE TO FOREIGN NATIONALS
■TOP SECRET UMDRft"
172
DOCID: 3188691 b11 '
fbl (31-50 USC 403
(is) (31-P.L. 86-36
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jrop-jrrnmiMiinfl
(b) (1)
(b) (3)~P.L. B6-36
(b) (3)-50 USC 403
i(b) (1)
(b) (3)
fOGA
The American Response
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jnn SEcnn umuhA'7
In 1957 th e Soviets opened a new, ran ge at Tyura Tam, sonie 700/miles east of
Kapustin Yar. J [ that this would be theiite for the Soviets' first i
ICBM launches, and a CIA -driven search through U-2 photograpfry in the summer of 1957 f
rcv
1
onfirmed this. 26
J 1
J Moreover J/ |became more and more a cue card for U-2
missions. When U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down in I960, he was on a
/
ftiich had been recently identified
as being
level. By iyh8 it had
;^his discovery led to the elevation of the problem to division
iecome the Advanced Weaponry and Astronautics Division;
j |which cdncehtrated NSA's resources into a single .organization. It came to be referred to
(b) (1)
(b) (3)-P.L. B6-36
(b) (3) -50 USC 403
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175
__JO£ 'trcnrT urgmTfTT
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TOPSE
'(b) (1)
(b) (3)-P.L. 86-36
(b) (3)-50 USC 403
(b) (3) -18 USC 798
as "SMAC" (Soviet Missile and
Astronautics Center)
lb) (1)
tb) (3)
OGA
JSMAC established a
Joseph Burke
In both concept and
new operator-to-operator communica-
tio ns system wh ich became known as
-the Joseph Burke, now
regarded as the "father of SMAC," is
believed to have originated this
system. 30
To orchestrate the system, SMAC
established an all-night watch,
virtually eliminating the call-in
system for this critical project. SMAC
was one of the organizations that
eventually got NSA out of the eight-
hour-per-day mode, and it pioneered in r
the development of tip-off systems and quick reaction capabilities,
technology, it long preceded NSOC. 31
NSA had numerous competitors in the missile arena. The Air Force had launched a
small detachment of ATIC (Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air
Force Base, Ohio) in San Antonio. Collocated with Air Force Security Service, SMTIG
(Soviet Missile Technical Intelligence Group) consisted of a cross-section of the Air Force
intelligence disciplines, but it was dominated by SIGINT people. Its analysis directly
overlapped much of what NSA was doing. In addition, CIA was well along on its missile
analysis effort and included SIGINT as well as other intelligence disciplines in its
program. *
The Soviet Atomic Bomb Project
While the Soviets were developing delivery systems, Stalin directed that the
development of the nuclear weapons themselves be given the highest priority. Working
with information provided by the atomic spies in the West, and with captured German
nuclear physicists, the Soviets raced to get the bomb. Their first test site was constructed
at Semipalatinsk (now referred to as "Semey"), a remote Siberian location, and for some
years the Soviets used that site exclusively. The Semipalatinsk monopoly on nuclear tests
HANDLE VIA TALENT KEYHOLE COMINT CONSfiOI^B¥STEI5S JOINTLY
NOTRELEASAmJB^e^tJRElGNNATIONALS
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.5<b) (1)
*S(b) (3)
U OGA
was finally broken in 1955 with the explosion' of an IjinderVater device in the sea off
Novaya Zemlya, a large Arctic island northeasfrof the Kola Peninsula. 33
As with the missile development program, so it was iwith nuclear weaponsj "
The American system for monitoring Soviet nuclear tests consisted of a complex of
seismic and infrared sensors positioned ai/ound the world. The entire system depended.
The bomber and missile gap controversies in the late 1950s triggered a search for an
operational Soviet strategic nuclear delivery orga nization. With the launch of Sputnik in
October 1957, this became a white-hot priority,! ~~~
(b) (1)
(b) (3)-P.l. 8S-36
(b) (3)-50 USC 403
(b) (J) -IB USC 796
The Soviets did not yet
have a nuclear delivery organization, all the information from Senator Symington
notwithstanding. In January 1960 the U SSR publicly announced the formation of a new
Strategic Rocket Forces (SRF) command,!
In 1960, DCI Allen Dulles directed that the chairman of the Guided Missile and
Astronautics Intelligence Committee (GMAIC) organize a study gro up to completely
evaluate the Air Forte contention that there was a missile gap. Using l |
photog raphic eviden ce collected from the U-2, the committee concluded that only the test
site at was capable of launching a. jnissile. This contradicted the latest
national intelligence estimate, which postulated that there would be thirty-five
operational launchers by midrl96d! Dulles then directed that a permanent Deployment
Working Group be established to comb all the evidence thoroughly.
The crash of the U-2 piloted by Francis Gary Powers on 1 May temporarily ended
overhead photography as a source of intelligence, and the committee had to proceed fr om
Using old ^ photographs..and.uprtor.the'minut ej
the
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177
DOCID: 3188691
••' (b) (1)
(b) (3J-P.L. 86-36
(b) (3)-50 USC 403
(b) (3J-18 USC 798
TQ|
RET UMBRA
group finally concluded that only Tyura Tarn and possibly one to three other operational
launchers e xisted, including Verkhnyaya Salda and Yur'ya. Plesetsk was still assessed as
unfinished.
The paranoia of the 1950s receded to be replaced by the optimism and military forci?
projection policies of the 1960s. By the time Kennedy became president, Dulles had proved\
that the Soviets still presented ho real strategic nuclear threat, although clearly that '
threat was on the horizon, During the dark days of the 1950s, though, when no one really
knew what went on behind the Iron Curtain,
It was President Eisen
lower's hole card.
The Chinese Threat
Compared with the Soviet Union, China could hardly be considered a strategic threat.
But Stalin and Mao appeared to be on friendly terms. China had intervened in Kored, and
many Americans (including some in the intelligence business) believed in an overarching
Communist conspiracy - the Sino-Soviet Bloc. If Stalin had the bomb, could Mao be far
behind? \
American suspicions of a close Sino-Soviet relationship were confirmed through
COMINT by the exploitation of COMINTERN communications. This traffic showed a long-
standing liaison between the COMINTERN and Mao's forces, going back to the 1930s.
When, in the late 1940s, ASA first began exploiting Soviet plain-language printer,
analysts discovered that the Soviets were sending World War II lend-lease equipment to
Mao, who was then attempting to overthrow Chiang Kai-shek. Clearly, the USSR was the
major arms supplier for the Chinese armies, and the Soviets had nuclear weapons. 38
During the 1954 Quemoy and Matsu crisis, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles
pledged American arms in defense of Formosa. The pledge was repeated during the 1958
renewal of the offshore islands imbroglio, but Dulles persuaded Chiang to renounce the
use of force against the PRC, and the islands never again caused a confrontation between
the U.S. and China. 39 Meanwhile, however, U.S. intelligence poured ever-inereasirig
resources into the China problem. i
In many ways, China resembled the USSR I
resources to go against the second-most-serious threat were scarce.
The Chinese program was delayed for several years by the Sino-
HANDLE VIA TALENT KEYHOLE COMINT CONTROL SYSTEMS JOINTLY
NOT RELEAFflfif T, T" F f hi I'll! Mil 1 1* ' I 1 1 1 h IT**
178
DOCID: 3188691
TOP
BRA
(b) (1)
!b) (3)
jiOGA
(b) (1)
(b) (3) -50 USC 403
(b) (3)-lB USC 798
(b) (3)-P.L. B6-36
Soviet rift,
not make r/apid progress until the 1960s.
China's strategic defense system did
The Early Days of Overhead
The early days of the new Eisenhower administration represen ted the blackest period
for U.S. intelligence on Soviet forces and strategic capabilities.
United States could noft.penetrate the Iron Curtain
it from the air.
If the
they would have to do
Attempts had already been made. In the late 1940s the CIA had tried to float high j
lloons over the USSR, equipped with cameras and recorders. This so-called j
rogram failed dismally. The few balloons that floated all the way fron
yielded little useful information.'
More determined were deliberate overflights of Soviet soil. SAC had a highly
compartmented (and still obscure) overflight program, carrying a variety of sensors. This
dangerous approach to intelligence collection was augmented by the RAF, which mounted
occasional overflights. But their participation was limited and ended after one famous
incident in 1953. At American behest, RAF aircraft over flew Kapustin Yar,[
They - came i back with their
planes shot full of holes and allegedly told the Amer icans that if they wanted that sort of
thing done, they could jolly welljdo it themselves.
A series of ground-breaking studies in the early 1950s urged Eisenhower to plunge
into advanced technological alternatives. One of the most attractive proposals was
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NOT RELMSABtiBTOTOK^GNNATIONALS
179
TOP SKBJrPtflfiBRA
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(b) (1)
!b) [3)
OGA
suggested by the Surprise Attack Panel, a committee set up under Dr, James R. Killian,
president of MIT. Dr. Edwin Land, a member of the panel and inventor of the Polaroid
camera, suggested that a camera could be devised which could take pictures from very
high altitudes, if the Air Force could build an airplane from which to mount such a
camera. In November 1954, Allen Dulles got bo build some thirty new aircraft
which had been designed for just such a purpose by Kelly Johnson, the top designer at
Lockheed. They were called U-2s. 44
There was at the time no guarantee that the U-2 was the answer. In fact, the
Eisenhnwpr ariminigt.ratinn i-nntiniioH tn nTav yntVi the balloon Option. ..Project
consisted of more than 500 bal
oons wnieft
jrej» Jloated-roi^'lEir USSR from Europe to Asia in early 1956.
them may have
successfultharl -
But
land some of
was no more
and of the 500, only forty-four were ever recovered after their
long ride from west to east. 45
The U-2 project was a very risky gambit by an administration desperate \to find out
what was happening in the Soviet Union. Advanced equipment was placed 'aboard ar;
aircraft easily picked out on radar, and defensible only because of its operational altitude
If the Soviets ever got a weapon that would shoot that high, the U-2 could be : a sitting
duck. \ j
This was undoubtedly in Eisenhower's mind when in 1955 he brbached the Open Skies
proposal to Khrushchev. The U-2 had not yet been launched, but when it was, it would be
a target. 46
\ \ \
From the time of the first. U-2 overflight on 7 April 1956, to the shootdown of iFrancis
Gary Powers on 1 May 1960, the Eisenhower administration launched twerity-foiir
missions. The objective was photography, and the targets related to Soviet strategic
systems. The aircraft also carried ari l j package, but this was probably used f0r
internal defense (presumably to warn the aircraft of the pr esence of unfriendly threats)
and to target the cameras. \ \
DOCID: 3188691
;(b) (l)
tb) (3) -50 USC 4 03
ib) (3)-P.L. 86-36
..-•""(b) (1)
" (b) (3)
OGA .
DOCID: 3188691
•'/(b) (1)
(b) (3)
OGA
Prior to the Powers flight, NSA began to note increased!
Henry Fenech, the NSA dfficial in charge of the
operation, stated that a mission just priof to the infamous May Day flight was chased by a
Soviet interceptor aircraft all the way. trt Afghanistan. It was obvious to Fenech that the
Soviets were loading up. 49 : Powers took off on 1 May 1960,1
Back at NSA, Fenech reported to CIA that the aircraft
had probably been lost to unexplained causes. It was the first loss of a U-2. f
CIA was desperate to know what had really happened to the aircraft, and in early 1962
General C. P. Cabell, deputy director of the CIA, decided to trade Soviet spy Rudolph Abel
for Powers. In March 1962, only a month after the return of Powers, CIA called a board of
inquiry, and into the middle of it marched Fenech, accompanied by NSA Director
Laurence F rost. Deputy Director Lou is Tordella, and Assistant Director for Production
Oliver Kirby
Both the S oviets and Powers said that the plane had been shot down at high altitude
with an SA-2.
Fenech
told CIA that it appeared Powers had begun a descent well before the SA-2 hit. Had he
gone to sleep? Was it inattention or hypoxia? Did he fl ame out and search for a lower
altitude to restart his engines? All Fenech knew was that\ :
Fenech did not
believe what Powers had told CIA. The CIA crowd was not amused, and Fenech
underwent a long and hostile grilling by the board.
(b) (1)
(b) (3)-50 USC 403
(b) (3)-18 USC T98
(b) (31-P.L. 8S-36
^h a t -really happened?... We will probably never know. Powers died in a helicopter
crash in 1977, so no more information is available from "turn: "But the
HANDLE VIA TALENT KEYHOLE COMINTCOjaaBOtrSTSTEMS JOINTLY
NOT RELEASA»i*TrrP6^EIGNNATIONALS
183
TOPJECRPRflSIfiRA
DOCID: 3188691
leaned so heavily on was suspect.
I Moreover, the Soviet officer who was in charge of the SAM
battery that supposedly shot Powers down stated after the end of the Cold War that the air
defense operators were so shocked at the shootdown that they didn't believe it, and for
twenty minutes or so they continued to reflect the aircraft on its presumed track to cover
up their befuddlement. 53 If the Soviet defenders did not know for sure what had happened,
and if they covered up information so as not to look bad up the line, the chance at ever
arriving at the truth looks very dim indeed. The theory that he was downed by an SA-2 at
very high altitude (68,000 feet) appears more plausible today than it did in 1960. j
THE ATTACK ON SOVIET CIPHER SYSTEMS
— rf(b) (1)
/ / (b) (3)-50 USC 403
/ / (b) (3)-18 USC 798
; (b) (3)-P.L. 8S-3S
Baker Report, 1958
When it was created, AFSA inherited a Soviet problem that was in miserable shape
There were only two bright spots. The first was unenciphered radioprinter, which
carried valuable |~ information. These links had not
yet begun to go to cipher. |
Even the darkest days, however, had their rays of hope. Howard Engstrom, a World
War II cryptologist now in the civilian computer business, suggested in 1950 that AFSA
might make progress by establishing a research institute comprising eminent civilian
scientists to attack the problem, very much in the pattern of Los Alamos of the Manhattan
HANDLE VIA TALENT KEYHOLE COMINT CONTROL SYSTEMS JOINTLY
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184
DOCID: 3188691
Project. 54 Then, two years later, AFSA's Scientific Com munications Advisory Group
(SCAG, a predecessor of NSASAB), chaired by Engstrom,
, \given sufficient resources
and a strong research and development effort. The need for a skilled civilian work force or
the employment of an outside research institute was essential. AFSA did not have a
strong enough civilian work force, and the Brownell Committee made this point forcefully
that same year. 55
'(b) (1)
(b) (3) -50 USC 403
(b) (3) -IB USC 79B
(b) (3)-P.L. 86-36
HANDLE VIA TALENT KEYHOLE COMINT CONTROL 3Y3TEM3 JOINTLY
MOT BELEAEADLE TO FOREIGN NATIONAL3
185 TORSECftTT U Mb RA
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?(b) (1)
(b) (3) -50 USC 403
(b) (3)-18 USC 798
(b) (3)-P.L. 86-36
As NSA struggled with the
/problem, two camps formed]
concerning the prospects for success! The first group felt that the effort was hopeless and
should not be funded. The 1957 Baker Pa nel leaned toward this viewpoint. The committee!
recommended that an effort be kept alive
]but it was pessimistic about long-range chances for success.
A second group felt that the United States would never know whether it would bej
possible or not because of inadequacies at NSA. /the organization was too skewed toward;!
military mannin g, was not hiring the right /kinds of civilians, and did not have arj
adequate budget.
This opinion was well entrenched at CIA/and was led by former NSAer Frank
Rowlett. A variant on this interpretation was offered by the Baker Panel, which suggested
that the internal NSA structure could hot cojte with the complexities of high-grade
systems. That job should be given, entirely io a Los Alamos-style civilian research
institute. 62
But within NSA itself there, v?as a strong undercurrent of disagreement with both
camps. Representative of this yie>v was the report of a committee chaired in 1956 by Navy
captain Jack Holtwick. Holtwick felt that a concentrated attack would yield enough
I / , [alone to justify the effort, and he recommended a
massive computer attack: /Such a super-high-speed computer would cost in the
neighborhood of $5 million per year, a considerable sum in those days.
needj"
/ | NSA would
would probably have to ha ve some of the work done at a private
research organization (the Los Alamos option again).
a
HANDLE VIA TALENT KEYHOLE OOMINT CONTROL 3Y3TEM3 JOINTLY
■MOT B i ffTnffi ft i SABLljl TO FOHEIQH NATIONALS
186
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TPMSCRlfuMI
TRACKING SUBMARINES - THE STORY OF BURST TRANSMISSIONS
Late in World War II, German scientists had once again come up with a serious threat
to Allied cryptologic efforts. This time, they had devised a way to compact lengthy manual
Morse messages into messages lasting only a few seconds. When played at normal speed, a
message sounded like a burst of noise in the receiver. The Germans called it KURIER and
intended it to be on submarines, agents (spies), and eventually aircraft for low-probability-
of-intercept communications. Early models were deployed before war's end, and GCCS
intercepted transmissions on at least one occasion. Fortunately, however, KURIER was still
in the experimental stage.
When the war ended, a German submarine surrendered in Argentina, the nearest
landfall. Aboard the sub was a German scientist with extensive engineering notes and
knowledge of the system, and he was willing to talk to the Americans about it. Even
luckier, the British captured an actual KURIER system, and both the British and
Americans experimented with it, primarily for the purpose of building burst systems for
their own submarines. 65
Unfortunately, the Soviets also captured German scientists working on KURIER, and
the ticom teams discovered this during their debriefing sessions. At the time, the Navy
(b)(1)
(b)(3)-50 USC 403
(b)(3)-18USC798
(b)(3)-P.L. 36-36
HANDLE VIA TALENT KEYHOLE GOMIWT ' CONTRQL 3Y3TEM3 JOINTLY
NOT TTffil SASABLE TO FOItEION HATIOKALO
187
DOCID: 3188691
%b) (1)
'(b) (3) -50 USC 403
fib) (3)-18 USC 798
(b) (3J-P.L. 86-36
DOCID
(b) (1)
(b) (3)-50 USC 4
(b) (3)-18 USC 7
(b) (3)-E.L. 86-
DOCID: 3188691
(b) (3)-P.L. 86-36
TOMKKffujyrfjRA
(b) (1)
(b) (3) -50 USC 403
(b) (3)-P.L. 86-36
Notes
'Soviet Manual Systems Since 1946: A History of Their Cryptography, Usage and
Cryptanalytic Exploitation"; unpublished draft available in CCH.
2. Ibid; see also Frank Rowlett, "Recollections of Work on Russian," unpublished manuscript dated 11 Feb.\l965,
available in CCH; see also NARA, SRH-001 , 296.
\ 3. Robert L, Benson and Cecil Phillips, History ofVenona, published in March 1995. The name "KGB" wiU be
\ used throughout this book to refer to the Soviet intelligence organization and its predecessors, the MVD and
\ 'NKVD. \
xf'Befbre BOURBON: American and British COMINT Efforts against Russia and the
\4.
Soviet Union Before 1945," Cryptologic Quarterly, Fall/Winter 1993, 1-20; Benson and Phillips, Venona; Frarik
Rowlett, "The Story of Magic," Ch. VII, 53; manuscript available in CCH. \
5. Rowlett, VII.53.; Oliver R>Kirby, "The Origins of the Soviet Problem: A Personal View," Cryptologik,
Quarterly. Vol II, No. 4, Winter 92; ; Louis W. Tordella, series of oral history interviews beginning 28 June 1990\
by Robert Farley, Charles Baker, Tom Johnson and others, NSA OH 8-90. \
6. Rowlett, "Recollections . . " ; see also Oliver R. Kirby oral interview, 11 June 1993, by Charles Baker, Guy \
Vanderpool,
7. Howe, "Narrative History of AFSA/NSA, Part I
and David Hatch, NSA OH 20-93. Tordella interview.
Early BOURBON," 1994.
9. Benson and Phillips, Venona.
10. Benson and Phillips, Venona; Kirby, "The Origins of the Soviet Problem."
11. Robert T. Lamphere, and T. Schachtman, The FBI- KGB War, a Special Agents Story (New York: Randon
House, 1986.
12. Benson and Phillips, Venona.
13. Lamphere and Schachtman, 78.
14. For information on the Petsamo Incident and the Stella Polaris project, refer to the following: Lamphere and
Schachtman (not the best source); interview with Hallamaa in Madrid in 1951, in NSA/CSS Archives, ACC
7975N, CBRJ 22; Benson and Phillips, Venona, Stella Polaris document collection in NSA/CSS Archives, ACC
1 177-79, 11369-76, 12504, 19043N, 19044, CBRJ 23.
15. Benson and Phillips, Venona.
16. Ibid.
17. See David Martin, Wilderness of Mirrors (New York: Ballantine Books, 1980).
18. Brownell Report, 106-08, in CCH Series V.F.7.13.
HANDLE VIA TALENT KEYHOLE COMINT CONTROL 0Y3TBM0 JOINTLY
NOT R.EI .F. A g A m P Tn PnnT?Tr.T»T t.j » miniT . t n .,
DOCID: 3188691
]?{b) (3)-P'.L. 86-36
19. No history of Black Friday was compiledat the time, partly bec ause of the fragmented nature of cryptology in
those days. The best versions have Only recently been compiled: f / j^ Beyond BOURBON X
1948. The Fourth Year of Allied Collaborative COMINT Effort Against the Soviet Vnioii? Cryptologic Quarterly^
Spring 19 95; and Bens on and Phillips, Veno na^Mt additional information, see orifrinterview with | |
| t OMay 1985 by | | and Robert Farley, NSA OH 03-85; or.$$story interview with CecU
J. Phillips, 8 July 1993, by Charles Baker and Tom Johnson, NSA OH 23 r 93; oral history interview with Herbert
L. Conley, 5 March 1984, by Robert Farley, NSA OH 01-84; and Oliver R., Kirby, "The Origins of the Soviet
Problem "
20. Details of the early Soviet program can be found i:
Program (1945-1953)," Spectrum, V (Summer 1975), 12-19;
it
[35arly History of the Soviet Missile
The Soviet Land- Based Ballistic Missile
Program, 1945-1972: An Historical Overview," unpublished manuscript available in CCH,
21
The Soviet Land-Based Ballistic Missile Prigram. . ./
26. Oral interview with Ray Potts and
16 May 1994.
29. Walter Laqueur, A World of Sedrets: The Uses and Limits of Intelligence. (New York: Basic Books, Inc.,
Publishers), 143-44.
30
| [ the Soviet Land-Based Ballistic Missile Program. . . ."
31. Tevis interview.
32. Amato interview.
33
History of the Soviet Nuclear Weapons Program," intelligence report available in CCH.
38. Kirby interview.
39. O'Neill, 279.
40. Background papers for the 1967 Eaton Committee, available in CCH; oral interview with Milton Zaslow, 14
May 1993, by Charles Baker and Guy Vanderpool, NSA OH 17-93.
(b) (1)
(b) (3) -50 USC 403
(b) (3)-P.L. 86-36
IIAJTOLE VIA TALENT KEYHOLE COMINT CONTROL 3Y3T - HM3 JOINTLY
NOT BELEASABLE TO FOREIGN NATIONALD
DOCID: 3188691
41. Ray S. Cline, The CIA under Reagan, Busk and Casey (Washington, D.C.: Acropolis Books, 1981), 200-201;
"Report of the Secretary's Ad Hoc Committee on COMINT/COMSEC," June 1958 (Robertson Committee), CCH
Series VI.C.1.11.; "Tibetan Revolt of 1959," informal paper prepared for Eaton Committee in 1967, available in
CCH.
42. Burrows, Deep Black, 62-3.
43. Burrows, Deep Black, 67; Michael R. Beschloss, Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev and the U-2 Affair (New
York: Harper and Row, 1986), 77-79; Oral interview with Henry R. Fenech, 30 Sep 1981, by Robert Farley, NSA
OH 8-81.
44. Stephen A. Ambrose, Eisenhower, Volume 2: The President (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), 227-28.
45. Burrows, Deep Black; NSA/CSS Archives, ACC 24355, CBOH 36.; Ambrose, Eisenhower, 309-10.
46. Ambrose, Eisenhower, 266.
53. Vox Topics, V. 3, # 3, 1992.
54. CIA-AFSA collaboration (Wenger file), in ACC 9142, CBIB 27.
55. Collins, V. II, 6; Browne!! Report.
61. Baker Panel report.
62. Collins, V. II, 16, 23.
63. Holtwick.
(b) (1)
(b) (3J-P.L. 86-36
(b) (3)-50 USC 403
(b) (3) -18 USC 798
HANDLE VIA TALENT KEYHOLE OOMINT CONTROL 3YBTEM3 JOINTLY
NOT ItELEAOADLE TO FOREION NATIONAL3
192
DOCID: 3188691
(b) (3J-P.L. 86-36
65. NSA/CSS Archives, ACC 3838, CB0H11; OTtoiurk'e interview; oral interview witl] ' [17 July
1986, by Robert Parley and Tom Johnson, NSA QH 1 9-86:; NSA/CSS Archives, ACC 3838, CBOH 1 1L.
66. CCH Series V.R.1.7;V.B.2.7.
67
paper available in CCH; NSA/CSS Archives, ACC 3838, CBOH 11.
68.
Radio Direction Finding in the U.S. Navy: the First Fifty Years,"
69.
85
jHistory of HFDF in the Pacific Ocean Prior to the Advent of Bullseye," 1981, in CCH Series VII
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Chapter 5
Building the Internal Mechanism
CRYPTOLOGY IS AUTOMATED -
THE STORY OF EARLY COMPUTERIZATION
The trouble with machines is people.
Edward R. Murrow, 1952
Antecedents
Modern cryptanalysis, with its emphasis on the manipulation of large amounts of
data, was one of the earliest government enterprises to acquire the new office automation
equipment being produced by a small company called International Business Machines
(IBM). In 1931, OP-20-G obtained some of the new IBM machines and quickly employed
them in the cryptanalytic process to sort large amounts of data and determine likes and
unlikes. In 1935 Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) acquired the same type of equipment for
the same purpose. By World War II "EAM" (electronic accounting machine) equipment
had become commonplace in COMINT processing, and it contributed mightily to
codebreaking, especially in the Pacific Theater. By the end of the war, OP-20-G and SIS
combined were using more than 700 IBM-type machines. 1
Of the two, the Navy seemed to be further along. During the 1930s and into the early
war years, OP-20-G had attempted a partnership with Vannevar Bush, the renowned MIT
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology) scientist, to build a faster comparator for analytic
(read cryptanalytic) use. This rather bumpy relationship had so far yielded a number of
notable technological and administrative failures when, in 1943, OP-20-G became a
partner with GCCS in running attacks against the four-rotor German naval ENIGMA. They
ultimately decided on a huge, clunky mechanical marvel which has been dubbed the
"American bombe," A technological dinosaur when compared to the devices Bush was
experimenting with, the bombe at least worked and was used in the last two and a half
years of the war to break German naval ENIGMA keys. The Navy development and
contract monitoring operation was called the Naval Computing Machine Laboratory
(NCML); it was located on the grounds of National Cash Register in Dayton, Ohio, the
prime production contractor. 2
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The American Navy Bombe
A Navy WAVE checks rotor settings during World War n.
Although a very fast comparator, the bombe was not a true computer. It did not have a
stored digital program which could be modified. But even as the Navy designed and built
the bombes, the British were moving ahead into the era of true computers. To attack
systems even more complex than ENIGMA, GCCS was developing a computer which
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employed an electronically generated key that was compared with the German cipher text.
Although it did not have a true internally stored program, the settings were operator-
adjustable according to how close he or she thought they were to a cryptanalytic solution.
They called it Colossus. Some contend that it was the world's first true computer, although
Colossus must compete for that honor with ENIAC, which was being developed at the
University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electronics to generate complex artillery
ballistics tables for the Army. Either Colossus, designed for cryptologic use, or ENIAC, for
ballistics, probably deserves the title of the world's first computer. 3
Postwar Developments
OP-20-G could see the technological possibilities in the bombe, and it was decided even
before the war ended that the effort should continue. But National Cash Register had no
intention of continuing the association. They wanted to return to making cash registers.
So at the end of the war, NCML was physically evicted, along with the remainder of its
undelivered bombes, and the project came to a halt. 4
OP-20-G needed a prime
contractor with which to work. Months
before the war ended, Howard
Engstrom, a key figure on the bombe
project, decided to start a new company
specifically to do business with OP-20-
G. At war's end, he left the Navy and
took with him the best and brightest
technicians at NCML. They set up a
new company called Electronic
Research Associates (ERA), under the
wing of an already established firm
called Northwestern Aeronautical
Corporation in St. Paul, Minnesota.
The Navy made no specific promises
regarding contracts for the fledgling
company, but none were needed.
Engstrom and associates had a corner
on the technological expertise that OP-
20-G required, and contracts flowed
almost immediately. 5
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The relationship between ERA and the Navy was emblematic of the way relationships
had developed between the cryptologists and private industry. During thje war OP-20-G
had developed a close relationship with IBM, Eastman Kodak, and Rational Cash
Register. SIS had a similar kind of relationship with Bell Laboratories and Teletype
Corporation. Those businesses kept a stable of cleared people who could do jobs quickly
and quietly for the cryptologists. In the COMINT and COMSEC businesses, it did not pay to
advertise. 6 /
Both the bombe and ENIAC had been developed through classified wartime military
contracts. Thus computing in the United States began in the rarified atmosphere of tight
security. Though the cryptanalytic aspects were not publicized, the Army relationship
with the Moore School became a matter of public knowledge in 1946 when the inventors of
ENIAC, John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, gave a series of/lectures on electronic
computers. As the two men left the Moore School to establish a computer manufacturing
company, they dispersed their knowledge nationwide in what became known as the Moore
School Lectures. Many felt that this lecture series launched the ; computer industry in the
United States. 7
Howard Engstrom had found out about the Moore School/Lectures, and he suggested
that the Navy send a cryptologist to observe. Thus, when the/lectures began, sitting in the
back of the room was Lieutenant Commander James T. Pendergrass, a Navy
mathematician employed at Nebraska Avenue. Pendergpass delivered a report to the
Navy on the Moore lectures which focused attention on/ the emerging new computer
technology. This resulted in negotiations with ERA which led to the construction of the
Atlas machine. 8
Like the bombe before it, the first generation of postwar cryptologic computers
produced highly specialized machines, called in thos6 days "rapid analytic machines"
(RAMs). Each machine was constructed for a different purpose and attacked a different
cryptanalytic machine or problem. Programs were /particular rather than general, and
inputs and outputs were of specialized design. A listfof AFSA machines, both present and
projected, in 1952 contained sixty RAMs, as opposed to only eight that had more flexible
objectives. 9 An e xample of a RAM was ivhich was developed by ERA to attack
LO
Even in those early days computer companies were willing to take on difficult
developmental tasks. For instahce^operating under a 1947 contract, ERA developed the
world's first magnetic drum storage system.as part of a RAM project called GOLDBERG. 11 A
successor project, called ATLAS (also built by EISA), applied the drum storage technology to
a more general purpose cryptanalytic processor. ATLAS was ERA's first major computer
development, and it led to the company's first commercial product, the ERA 1101,
produced after the company had become merged with Remington-Rand-Uniyac to form the
first major American computer company. 12
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Atlas I
While NSG forged ahead, ASA was trying to catch up. In ASA, the role played by
Engstrom, Tordella, and Pendergrass was at first taken on single-handedly by Samuel
Snyder, one of Friedman's most talented prewar cryptanalysts.
Snyder's 1947 paper "Proposed Long-Range Cryptanalytic Machines Program for
Literal Systems" played a seminal role in ASA's first postwar venture into the new
technology. In it, Snyder proposed that ASA develop its own analytic computer based on
extensive research into existing technology. Snyder himself did most of this early
research, drawing at first on information provided by Pendergrass and Howard
Campaigne of NSG. He made pilgrimages to the fountainheads of computer research:
Aberdeen Proving Grounds to see ENIAC, Bell Labs to see its Relay Computer, IBM to see
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the IBM Selective Sequence Calculator, and MIT to see its Differential Analyzer. He
attended a lecture series at the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) which concentrated
on Univac products (Univac had been formed in 1946 by Mauchly and Eckert), Raytheon
computers, and the Ace Computer (one of the earliest British entries into the commercial
computer field). Snyder suggested that ASA team up with NBS, which already had some
expertise in the field, and he proposed that ASA form a committee to guide the effort. 13
ASA decided to go ahead with development of a general-purpose analytic computer
called ABNER. Working through NBS, ASA arranged for subcontracts on mercury delay
memory and for magnetic tape drives from Technitrol and Raytheon, respectively. Snyder
contended that abner i, which was released for use in 1952, was the first machine that
placed primary emphasis on nonarithmetic operations. Although it played a role in the
development of later computers for cryptologic applications, one expert in in the field
called Abner "barely functional." This was an appellation that could have applied to many
of the early experiments in machine-age cryptology. 1 *
The early cryptologic computers were troglodytic. They were physically programmed
in binary instructions input via paper tape. They used octal numbers and words twenty-
four bits long. There was no "computer language" as such. Memories were tiny by today's
standards - the drum memory for ATLAS, for instance, held only 16,000 words. There being
no more advanced technology available, vacuum tubes were used for relays, despite the
obvious disadvantages this created in terms of heat buildup and tube replacement. Early
computers were usually "down" more often than they were "up." When they were "up,"
though, they provided answers faster than anything imaginable. 15
Vacuum tubes were on the way out, to be replaced by transistors, developed at Bell
Labs in the 1940s by future Nobel prizewinner William Shockley and others. NSA
scientists were among the first to apply the new transistor technology to computers, and in
the mid-1950s it developed an in-house computer called SOLO, the world's first computer to
be entirely transistorized. SOLO was subsequently marketed commercially by the
contractor, Philco, as the Transac S-1000. 16
Other innovations were on the way. In the mid-1950s NSA began making the
transition from centralized computer operations to remote job access systems. The first
remote job access computer, ROGUE (for Remotely Operated General Use Equipment), used
hardware called Alwac HIE developed by a small firm called Logistics Research,
Incorporated. ROGUE had three remote terminals connected to a small central processor. 17
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SOLO
RAMs like ROGUE were good for specific jobs, but cryptologists recognized very early
that they would require more generalized systems to process very large volumes of data. A.
study in the mid-1950s depicted just how much material must be massaged. Raw traffic
arrived in courier shipments every day at the rate of thirty-seven tons per month. An
additional thirty million groups of traffic arrived (in Tecsumized form) via teletype.
Traffic from some entities (particularly the mechanization-resistant manual Morse
intercept) received less than 50 percent detailed processing - the rest was held in case it
was needed. 18
As early as 1946, NSG began the search for a computer that could hold very large
volumes of data. Studies of mass data handling methods led to a contract between the
Navy and Raytheon in 1951 to develop and produce a machine called NOMAD that would be
physically and financially the largest cryptologic machine yet. But the NOMAD contract
went badly off schedule from the first, and the contract was killed in June 1954. 19
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The best general-purpose computer in the early days was an IBM product, the 701,
designed in partnership with NSA. NSA leaned toward magnetic tape rather than disks,
and the 701 had the first truly functional tape drives controlled by vacuum columns.
The 701 was followed by the IBM 705, which became the mainstay for general-purpose
computing. Coming on line in the mid-1950s, the 705 was a nonfixed-word-length
machine. It had the best sorter around, an assembler (called a "transembler") that
mimicked punched card machines. The 705 had a major impact on data processing, and it
made it possible to begin processing massive volumes of data rolling in from the rapidly
expanding network of collection sites around the world. 20
Parallel to the general-purpose processors was a line of special-purpose scientific
machines. Notable was the IBM 704, which had a 36-bit word, punched card input, and
tape drives for storage. 21
Cryptology still needed a general-purpose system. A committee, formed to review the
demise of NOMAD, specified the requirement for a system that could be of use to both traffic
analysts and cryptanalysts. For the traffic analyst, it would have to have large storage,
have a file capability for collateral infor mation, and be capable of sorting quickly. For the
cryptanalyst, it should be able to tackle
To achieve the requisite flexibility, the system would require a general-purpose/
mainframe with special-purpose peripherals. The project was called FARMER. 22
At the time, IBM was working on a project to extend the performance of its latest
product, the 704, by a factor of 100. They called it STRETCH. IBM approached both NSA
and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), the two government agencies that it felt would
have the most use for such a system. AEC agreed to proceed, but NSA ultimately decided
that it wanted something specifically optimized for cryptologic applications. However,
IBM was on the right track, NSA concluded, and awarded Big Blue contracts for research
in high-speed memory (SILO) and to design a general processing system for Agency use
(PLANTATION, later called RANCHO). 23 The entire project was eventually folded int|o a
gigantic effort to develop a large-scale computer. It was called HARVEST. /
The most difficult part of the project turned out to be designing the magnetic /tape
drives. Under a project called TRACTOR, IBM developed new tape drives and a uiiique
automatic cartridge loading system having 100 times the speed of the IBM Type 727 tape
drives then in use. Each of the three TRACTOR units managed two tape drives, and it
automatically retrieved and hung data tapes in a robotic environment that was the fonder
f
of the U.S. government. It made for great theater and was on the mandatory show-ahd-tell
tour for years. /
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HARVEST tractor units
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HARVEST worked after a fashion and remained the Agency's central processor from the
time it went on line in 1962 until it was finally retired in 1976, a phenomenal life span for
any computer system. But those who had to make it work remember it as balky, difficult
to program, and not performing anywhere near the specifications that had been set for the
system. It was a transitional machine. 24
NSA's most lasting contribution to computer history was undoubtedly Project
LIGH TNING. LIGHTNING re sulted from NSA's reaction to outside criticism that it could not
break systems and to proposals that this part of COMINT be transferred
to an o utside research organization. Pricked by the criticism, Canine initiated an all-out
attack
/ As part of the project, Canine proposed that NSA develop a
computer that would advance the state of technology by three orders of magnitude. He!
decreed that the goal was a "l,o6o megaHertz machine," and at a USCIB meeting in!
August of 1956 he requested $25 million seed money. The sum angered the Defense 1
Department and placed NSA's budget in jeopardy. In order to get it approved, General
Samford took his case directly to President Eisenhower and his top scientists, Vannevar
Bush and Jerome Wiesner. Eisenhower came down hard in favor, and he authorized thk
use of his name to push the project ahead. 25
Three major contractors participated - IBM, RCA, and Sperry Rand Univac - but Ohio
State University, Kansas University, Philco, and MIT also performed lesser rolek
lightning never resulted in a computer, but the research teams turned up information
that drove the next generation of commercial machines. Among the most significant
findings were in the field of cryogenics. IBM's Dudley Buck developed the cryotron, , and
through his research IBM proved the now-obvious axiom that the lower the temperature,
the faster the computer. Sperry Rand Univac concentrated oh thin magnetic field devices
and, through these early experiments in chip technology, found that computer speed woijild
increase when components were subminiaturized in order to place them closer together.
RCA concentrated on applications of the tunnel diode, one of the fastest switching devices
known. 26 j
As the 1950s wore on, cryptologists broadened computer applications to include! far
more than just cryptanalysis. NSA first used computers to generate COMSEC material in
1959, when the COMSEC organization began employing the Univac File Computer for that
purpose. And for the processing of intercepted traffic for traffic analytic applications^ the
IBM 700-series computers continued to be the mainstay. I
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| For scanning in the field,
CDC (Control Data Corporation, the successor to ERA) developed the concept of key word
search under a project called FADE-IN. Text scanning in the field was not implemented
until the early 1960s. SOAPFLAKES was believed to be the first key word scan system at
NSA. 27
Most of these processes were off-line. Intercepted traffic in Tecsumized or diarized
form spilled off the communications lines in paper tape form and was carted off to another
area of the building to be input to processing computers. But it was not the wave of the
future. SMAC first began experimenting with the use of a computer to directly receive
inputted messages from the field, and so avoid the paper tape step. This effort used Univac
494s and was in a very early stage of development as the 1950s came to a close.. 28
NSA COMMUNICATIONS IN THE PRE-CRITICOMM ERA
S (3) -so use 403 Equipment is obsolescent, insufficient in number and inadequate for the purpose. . . . Such
(b) (3)-p.l. 86-35 essentials to operations as, for example, a place to put live traffic and operators' logs, are
neglected in the installation and are provided, if at all, as an afterthought when operations
begin. . . . Homemade bins in the aisles, traffic piled on the floor or clipped to overhead wires like
clothes on a line, logsheets resting on machines, et cetera, are the inevitable result.
1955 study of the COM1NT communications system
Rapid communications is the lifeblood of SIGINT. Cryptologists have grown so
accustomed to virtually instantaneous access to remote corners of the globe that they could
not operate any other way. But in the early days, they operated in a decidedly different
mode.
AFSA, when created, had no indigenous communications at all. Instead, the
organization depended entirely on communications paths and facilities provided by the
services. COMINT passed from collection sites to Washington on armed service
communications. It was encrypted off-line at the field site, then was passed to a local
communications center manned by non-SI indoctrinated people, who put it on common
user circuits for transmission. If the traffic originated at a Navy site, it was put onto naval
communications; if it was an Army site, it went via Army communications; and so forth.
The traffic was long, vertical umbilical, service-unique and electrically sealed until it
reached Washington, where the information could then be passed to other services or to
AFSA.
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The message went via HF single sideband, passing through up to six relay centers
before finally arriving at either Arlington Hall or Naval Security Station. It might have to
be reencrypted up to five times, and the process required from twenty-four to forty-eight
hours to send a routine message to the capital. Because of the many relays and inherent
degradation of HF channels, up to 30 percent arrived undecipherable and had to be
retransmitted. Messages required several hours for decryption, and the handling time for
each message, including marking and routing to the intended recipient, took several more
hours. The ASA communications center at Arlington Hall, for instance, was taking
approximately four days (on top of the one to two days of transmission time) to deliver a
routine message. The fastest possible handling time on the most critical information was
not less than five to six hours from time of intercept, according to information furnished to
the Robertson Committee in 1953 . 29
When AFSA came into existence,
the communications system on which it
relied was reported to be "in a
deplorable and deteriorating state."
Arthur Enderlin, one of AFSA's top
communications people, conducted a
study detailing the decrepit conditions
and sent it to Admiral Stone. A
disbelieving Stone decreed a full-blown
study, which just confirmed Enderlin's
contentions. 30
Nothing was done under Stone. But
when Canine arrived, plans were
immediately laid by Enderlin's
successor, Lieutenant Colonel William
B. Campbell, for a separate AFSA
communications center to process traffic
destined for AFSA organizations. In
July 1952, the new communications
handling facility opened in B Building
at Arlington Hall, using Teletype Corpo-
ration Model- 1 9s. This was a good first
step, and it reduced the message
handling time for routine messages to
three hours, while cutting the message
backlog to almost nothing. 31
Arthur Enderlin
One of NSA's communications pioneers, he helped
develop the system throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
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Another Canine push was for secure telephone communications. The NSA gray phone
system, formally known as NSA/CSS Secure Telephone System (NSTS), began in AFSA's
waning days with a total of 200 lines, 100 each for Nebraska Avenue and Arlington Hall.
AFSA took possession of two-thirds of the telephone instruments, while the collocated
SCAs got one-third. A month later (September) a new microwave system became
operational between the two locations, ushering in an era of high-reliability, high-fidelity
communications. At the time, the system required an operator to connect the two parties,
just like commercial telephone circuits of the era. The following April NSA issued its first
consolidated telephone directory. 32
AFSA began broadening its secure communications contacts with its customers. The
Zone of Interior Connectivity (ZICON) net, originated in the early 1950s, consisted of
landline communications paths between AFSA and its principal customers: the three
services, State, and CIA. Later, the National Intelligence Indications Center in the
Pentagon was added, as well as SAC and CONAD (Strategic Air Command and
Continental Air Defense Command) for the Air Force. 33
The comint Comnet
By 1952 it was already clear that the growing volume of cryptologic communications
would not permit newly established NSA to pursue the old way of doing business. Already,
the daily group count was considerable and would grow in the ensuing years, as the
following table shows.
Table 1
Total Mean Daily Average Group
Count at NSA 3 *
Year
Count
1952
648,000
1953
1,247,117
1954
1,322,552
1955
1,320,073
1956
1,227,158
1957
1,424,351
1958
1,729,430
1959
2,059,763
1960
2,615,377
1961
3,896,211
1962
4,306,910
1963
5,089,777
1964
6,134,601
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Spurred by the studies by Enderlin and Campbell, and by the insistency of Canine,
NSA devised a plan to establish a worldwide cryptologic communications system.
Initially, NSA would establish a network of dedicated channels on th\e service
communications systems, manned only by Si-cleared people to eliminate the\multiple
encryption-decryption exercises.
But the ultimate plan was to establish a separate system, called the COMINT Comnet.
The dedicated circuits would gradually be internetted into a series of relay stations,
manned only by Si-cleared people. Initially there were to be six of these relay ce nter's, but
the number would expand along with the system of field sites that they serviced,
| Intercept sites would feed into the relay centers, which would bulk-forward traffic
(primarily intercepted material) back to NSA.
The relay centers would operate initially using torn-tape relays, but would eventually
transition to automated relay systems, thus significantly reducing handling time. Once in
the system, a message would never have to be reencrypted. When it reached NSA, it would
be distributed internally using facsimile equipment. In 1953 Canine announced to a field
site commanders' conference that the ultimate objective was to be able to return priority
traffic through the communications system within five to ten minutes, while routine
traffic would flow through in no more than an hour. 35
Canine was able to obtain, in short order, direct communications circuits to Stateside
users, GCHQ and CBNRC (as the Canadian cryptologic organization was then called). By
the end of 1952 NSA had nine such circuits and plans for six more in the near future.
These on-line circuits formed the basis for the COMiNTComnet. 36
But the rest of the plan depended on service cooperation, and that was a different
matter. Planning for the COMINT Comnet was entrusted to the Joint Communications
Electronics Committee, a joint JCS-level planning body whose chairman, Admiral John
Redman, had been a prominent member of the Navy cryptologic team during World War
II. But Redman was also a dedicated Navy man, and he viewed the proposed Comnet as
cutting down on the channel capacity available for other, uniquely service, uses. Under
such auspices the plan for a Comnet did not have a bright future.
A steering committee called CENSA (Communications-Electronics - National
Security Agency) decreed that each service would fund its own portion of the Comnet. And
there was where the rocks were. The services had other funding priorities, and moneys
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never seemed to be available for the Comnet. Every year NSA communications planners
enthusiastically charged up the hill, only to be beaten back again. 87
By the mid-1950s, the system was only partially funded, and so far no one had agreed
on an automated switch for the new relay centers. The centers that existed were entirely
manual operations, in which traffic from an incoming circuit generated a perforated tape
on the Mod-19. When the reperforator finished chattering, a communications center
operator coiled up the tape and carried it across the room to an outgoing circuit for onward
relay to the next center. Coiled tapes sat in boxes behind teletypewriters, awaiting
transmission. Communication centers were chaotic, operators were overworked, and
twelve-hour shifts were standard.
Meanwhile, NSA did what it could to improve the operation. The greatest technical
innovation of the 1950s was the introduction of the B urroughs-produced KW-26 on-line
encryption device. The KW-26 was a marvel of its day
almost doubled transmission speed.
Serial #1 of the KW-26 was placed in operation at the new NSA communications center at
Port Meade in 1957. The last of these devices was not pulled off the line until 1988. In the
ensuing thirty-one years it became the mainstay of cryptologic communications around
the world, the most secure and reliable on-line encryption device the United States had
ever fielded. 38
The new communications center at Fort Meade was planned to overcome the inherited
inadequacies of the facilities at Arlington Hall and Nebraska Avenue. Canine had wanted
NSA Fort Meade to start life with KW-26s, but the acquisition plan ran behind schedule,
and the new communications center on the 2-E corridor began with a hodge-podge of
equipment.
But on one thing Canine was insistent - he would not move to Fort Meade without a
secure ("gray") phone system. The secure phone system had expanded rapidly, and by
1956 it linked NSA with most important Washington-area customers. In 1957 work began
on the microwave tower on Fort Meade that was needed to carry the gray phone system to
Washington. The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company provided the path, while
Motorola provided the radio equipment for the link. Although Canine never actually
moved to Fort Meade (he retired with his office still at Arlington Hall), his successor,
General Samford, had a gray phone on his desk, courtesy of his predecessor. 39
Meanwhile, the early flirtation with facsimile equipment for internal distribution had
turned out badly. Fax, as it was called, could not handle the mountainous volumes of
traffic flooding into NSA every day. So in 1954 the Agency decided on distributed
teletypes. Teletype Corporation equipment was ordered, and equipments were parcelled
out through the Production working spaces. A new communications router would be
assigned to all incoming traffic. It would be called the DDI (Delivery Distribution
Indicator) and would have a very long and prosperous life. 40
(b) (1)
(b) (3)-P.L. 86-36
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In the fall of 1957, Sputnik went up, and the White House wanted all military and
warning communications systems brought up to par. At the time, the COMINT Comnet was
still in a state of partial being. NSA had managed to purloin some dedicated channels, and
the cryptologic community operated a few relay centers around the world. But the system
needed to be consolidated. More, it needed updated equipment, especially automated
relays to get rid of torn tape relay arrangements. Moneys for these improvements had
managed to find their way into military budgets throughout the 1950s, but they always
seemed to disappear into the outyears as the services took care of more pressing
requirements. All involved had grown cynical, and the budget for FY59 was not even
covered with the fig leaf of outyear moneys. . It contained nothing at all for the COMINT
Comnet, and this was how the Eisenhower administration found it in early 1958. 41
SECURING AMERICAN COMMUNICATIONS
It became apparent to me early in my work in the Signal Intelligence Service that it was more
important to secure our own messages than to read the communications of others I think it is
imperative that our history show the importance of our communications security effort as
compared with intelligence production.
Frank B. Rowlett
The COMINT Comnet would be no good if it were not secure. The business of securing
American communications had always been integrated with the task of breaking the
communications of other countries. Thus from the earliest days the cryptologic coin had
two sides: COMINT and COMSEC. During World War II, Signal Intelligence Service had a
COMSEC arm, and it produced COMSEC equipment and materials for the Army around the
world. In the Navy the integration was more tenuous and the COMSEC mission more
diffuse, but closely allied offices of OP-20 were involved in both functions. When the Air
Force was created, it gave COMSEC responsibilities to USAFSS. Thus the uniquely
complementary aspects of COMINT and COMSEC were recognized from the first. They were
never, as they were in Germany, divided among various organizations. Although the two
were, as World War II naval cryptologist Joseph Eachus once said, "natural enemies," the
dependence of one on the other was firmly established.
The Era of the Wired Rotor
Since the Revolutionary War, the U.S. government had been using manual (mostly
paper-based) code systems for communications security. With the advent of radio in the
early part of the twentieth century, communications security became even more
important. At the time, only manual codes and ciphers were available. Encrypting and
decrypting was a laborious process which slowed down communications and limited the
amount of information that could be sent from place to place.
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Paper codes were archaic solutions to modern communications requirements. After
World War I, inventors around the world worked on the problem, and almost
simultaneously three or four of them came up with the same solution - a mechanical
device consisting of rotors which moved to a different position each time a letter was
depressed on a keyboard. In the United States, the inventor of the hour was an eccentric
Californian named Edward Hebern. Hebern tried to sell his device to the Army and Navy,
but they found it to be both inherently insecure and mechanically unsound. Because of
this and patent and contractual difficulties, the relationship with Hebern was
terminated. 42
This did not mean, however, that the services ceased work on rotor machines.
Paralleling their competitors in the other industrialized nations, they made the wired
rotor the basis for most COMSEC devices used during World War II. The most secure
machine in the war, the SIGABA, was a wired rotor machine designed more or less jointly by
the Army and Navy in the late 1930s. The SIGABA was large, heavy, and required a good
deal of electricity. Some 11,000 were produced during the war. To communicate with the
British, SIS devised a modified SIGABA called the CCM (Combined Cipher Machine), and
the British used a very similar device on their end called Typex. CCM continued in use
long after the end of the war and was not replaced until 1958, when the KL-7 was
introduced for NATO use.* 3
SIGABA
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For tactical use, the Army used a modified Hagelin machine called M-209. It was
small and light, and being completely mechanical, it required no electricity, which made it
ideal for foxhole use. But it was difficult and time-consuming to set up properly.
(Nonetheless, it continued in use into the early 1960s.) Smith-Corona produced it in huge
quantities for $64 a copy - one former NSA official estimated that some 125,000 devices
were built before it went out of production. 44
The wartime machines were, with two exceptions, off-line devices. One typed the plain
text of the message on a keyboard, and the machine produced cipher text on (usually) a
sticky-backed tape which could be glued on a paper and taken to the communications
operator for transmission.
To handle the increasing volumes of messages, what was needed was a machine that
could convert plain to cipher text on-line. SIS devised a solution early in the war. Called
SIGCUM (Converter M228), it was not as secure cryptographically as SIGABA, and a new key
setting was required for every message. As a result SIGCUM was used in only limited
numbers. 45
A different sort of on-line machine was the SIGTOT, which used a one-time tape. One-
time tape machines became known generically as Python systems because of the huge coils
of cipher tape that they required. Python systems were used until the early 1960s, but
they were cumbersome because of the enormous quantities of tape that had to be
generated, handled, and fed through the TD (transmitter-distributor). They were not the
long-term answer. 46
SIGTOT
(Note the paper tape threaded from the right-hand
spool across the center of the machine through a perforator.)
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The Early Years of Secure Speech
Voice was far more difficult to secure. Systems devised in the early days of World War
II were cryptographically vulnerable, and better security was needed. Bell Labs built a
more sophisticated system during the war to carry high-level transatlantic phone calls.
Called SIGSALY, it was a true archetype. SIGSALY consisted of forty-five racks of equipment,
weighed thirty tons, occupied an entire room, required thirteen technicians to operate,
sucked up 35 kilowatts of power, carried only one voice channel, and cost $1 million per
copy. But given the cryptanalytic sophistication at the time, it was secure. At that price,
the government ordered only twelve systems and installed them in the key capitals of the
Western world, including Washington, London, and Melbourne. Churchill used it a few
times, and, apocryphally, Roosevelt also tried it out once. He allegedly gave up on it,
unhappy with the speech quality. 47 The United States entered the postwar era needing a
much smaller and less costly secure voice system.
SIGSALY
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Organizing for COMSEC in the Postwar World
The SCAs slipped into the postwar period with their COMSEC authorities virtually
unchanged. The newly renamed ASA was responsible for all Army COMSEC tasks. COMSEC
functions were part of the same organization, and personnel rotated between COMINT and
COMSECjobs.
The Navy COMSEC functions were still less monolithic than those of the Army, and the
tasks of engineering development, COMSEC research, production of keying material, and
building COMSEC machines were spread out across several organizations. COMSEC
functions involved the Bureau of Ships, Deputy Chief of Naval Communications for
Administration, Deputy Chief of Naval Communications Supplementary Activities (CSA,
i.e., NSG), and the Naval Code and Signal Laboratory. It was a complex bureaucracy, but
the link-up with the COMINT and COMSEC organizations within CSA seemed to keep naval
COMSEC moving in the same direction. 48
The newly created Air Force did not at first have a centralized COMSEC organization,
and for the first year or two of its existence it was serviced by ASA. But when USAFSS
was created in 1948, the Air Force assigned its centralized COMSEC functions to the new
cryptologic organization.
The three service efforts were rather loosely coordinated by the Joint
Communications-Electronics Committee. When one service developed and procured a
COMSEC device with broad applicability, it took care of the requirements of the other
services, a seat-of-the-pants approach to centralization which worked as long as everyone
agreed on the program. 49 So when AFSA was created in 1949, all three SCAs were doing
their own COMSEC.
Almost unnoticed at its creation, AFSA was anointed with centralized COMSEC
responsibilities. Naval Security Station at Nebraska Avenue became the locus for COMSEC
activities. Army colonel Samuel P. Collins and civilian Abraham Sinkov headed AFSA's
COMSEC organization. Centralized COMSEC functions were placid by comparison with
COMINT, and contributed little if anything to the demise of the organization. When AFSA
collapsed, it was because of turmoil in COMINT, not COMSEC. 50
When in October 1952 President Harry Truman established NSA, he also signed a
memorandum creating a centralized COMSEC function. The memo declared that COMSEC
(like COMINT) was a national responsibility, and it set up the secretary of defense and the
secretary of state as a special committee of the National Security Council for COMSEC. It
also directed that a new central board be established, to be called the United States
Communications Security Board (USCSB) to serve as an interdepartmental source of
COMSEC policy.
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But his memo did not actually establish the board, and a year dragged by before
USCSB received a charter. In the interim, Ralph Canine moved into the breach and acted
as the central COMSEC authority for the United States. The COMSEC function at Nebraska
Avenue continued as before while NSA waited for an official COMSEC structure to be set in
place. 51
The long delay in establishing an official COMSEC charter, NSC 168, was due to
disagreements over wording and authorities for NSA. Canine objected to the lack of
specific centralized authorities for NSA, and to a provision which placed DIRNSA under
the JCS for COMSEC. He was successful in getting the offending sentence removed and in
strengthening his other authorities. In October 1953, NSC 168 was published, and USCSB
was officially launched. 52
Besides DIRNSA, USCSB comprised representatives from State, Defense, Treasury,
FBI, the three services, CIA, AEC, and Justice. At the first meeting, the board began an
unstated but unswerving policy of always electing the Defense representative as the
chairman. This was normally the top scientific and technical official, and in the 1960s
Harold Brown, Eugene Fubini, Finn Larsen, and Gardiner L. Tucker, all deputy
secretaries of defense for research and engineering, successively chaired USCSB. 53
NSC 168 did not give Canine the whip hand for COMSEC that NSCID 9 did for COMINT.
The COMSEC process was very different, and it was never amenable to the rigid structure
and centralized control that applied to COMINT. Centralized authority was couched in
terms of cajolery rather than direction. NSA had specific technical authorities to prescribe
cryptoprinciples and cryptosecurity rules. But organizational authorities such as budget,
research and development, cryptosecurity monitoring, program review and the like were
expressed in less authoritarian terms such as "develop," "plan," "prepare," "formulate,"
and "insure." The services retained much of their COMSEC functions and structure
(generally resident within the SCAs). If a technical standard were violated, pulling the
offender back into line was to be done through the parent service. NSA could not force a
service to employ cryptosecurity on a given link; it could only point out the consequences of
noncompliance. Canine did not have central budgetary authority over COMSEC, and he
could not force a service to allocate money to COMSEC. 54
However, if a service decided to encrypt communications, NSA ruled the technical
specifications with an iron hand. It produced all the keys, wrote the procedures, governed
all compromise reporting and evaluation, established key supercession requirements, and
so forth. In this respect its COMSEC authority approximated its hold over COMINT. 55
Unlike USCIB (later USIB), USCSB did not become a strong and vital organization.
During the 1950s it held only a single meeting per year. In 1960 it met four times to solve
the problem of release of crypto equipment to NATO (a difficult issue which is covered on
the following page) and to deal with the problem of communications security (see p. 221).
After that it did not meet again for eight years. It named only one standing committee, the
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Special Committee on Compromising Emanations (SCOCE) - TEMPEST. NSA acted as its
secretariat and effectively did all the Wk$\
Far more than just prescribing COjtfSEC policies, NSA became deeply involved in the
design and production process. The AgencyXgenerated keying material using a wide
variety of techniques. NSA also designed COMSEC machines and simply turned the
production process over to a contractor after ah. the designs were completed. The
contractor in those days was little mare thanXan assembly organization. All the
interesting work was done in-house, 57 This would change in the 1980s under Walter
Deeley's "New Way of Doing Businesk" 58 \
AFSAM-7 \ \
In the early 1950s AFSA, and late^ NSA, pushed aheac \ | to develop
their first central, multise rvice encW otion device, the AFSAM-7, later the KL-7.
rotor and the Navy only a rotor, Canine
Erie Army's rotor as the standard. TheKL-
Although the Army wanted a
decreed uniformity, and NSA adopted t
7 proved immensely popular, and some 20,000 were produced at the very reasonable cost of
$1,200 a piece. Weighing only thirty pounds, it could run off either AC or DC power
(including a jeep battery).
The Navy strongly resisted the AFSAM-7/KL-7 development. After rejecting several
modifications designed to satisfy their requirements, they adopted a modified device called
a KL-47. The KL-47 was to have a long and interesting history . The Navv ended up using
it extensively aboard ship. |
When the AFSAM-7 was still new, the JCS proposed giving it to NATO countries.
This got NSA into a very murky area. Defense and State had for year s been concerned
about the security of U.S. defense information on NATO communications.
Ib) (1)
(b) (3) -50 USC 403
(b) (3)-P.L. 86-36
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AFSAM-7
Several different systems, including Typex and M-209, were loaned foV NATO use, but
none of them solved the problem of availability and security. Then in\ 1953 the JCS
proposed the brand-new AFSAM-7, the best off-line system the UlS. had. \State and CIA
both opposed the decision, but after several years of acrimonious\disagreement, USCIB
approved the AFSAM-7 for transfer to NATO. NSA voted with the W ajorityl
The Push for On-line Encipherment
The conversion of record communications to on-line encipherment was probably the
most significant COMSEC development of the postwar era. In the space of a few years NSA
led the U.S. government into the era of secure circuitry.
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After the war, thecryptologic community began the search for a reliable and efficient
on-line device. For a time it appeared that one-time tapes were the answer. The British
developed the 5UCO or the Secretape, which achieved limited use during the early 1950s.
But tape production and handling were still a nightmare, and the volume of
communications required in the 1950s dictated another solution. 60
Circuit speeds were beginning to exceed the capability of mechanical rotors to keep up.
What was needed was an electronic key generator. The solution was the NSA-developed
KW-26, the first on-line electronic key generator to come into wide use in the United
States. First fielded in 1957, the KW-26 remained the mainstay of U.S. enciphered text
communications for thirty years. According to a former NSA COMSEC official, the KW-26
made the Agency's COMSEC reputation. 81
The KW-26, because it was electronic rather than electromechanical, had no moving
parts, and its speed was limited only by the speed of the associated teletypewriters, which
at that time was up to 100 words per minute. Built during the transition from tubes to
transistors, the KW-26 had a little of both. It had a simple-to-set key system using cards
manufactured at NSA. When an operator pulled the card out of the machine, a knife sliced
it in half so that it could not be reused. Its chief disadvantage was that it could be used
only for point-to-point circuits, which dictated that a huge number of machines be
manufactured. At one time the NSA communications center alone had 336 of them. 62
The point-to-point modus limited the KW-26's utility in the Navy. Naval
communications were marked by wide-area fleet broadcasts to large numbers of ships
afloat. Naval vessels needed the capability to tune into a broadcast at any time during the
day or night and just receive traffic - transmitting messages was a much smaller
communications function. To solve this problem, NSA designed the KW-37, a crypto
device that permitted a ship's communications operator to tune into the fleet broadcast
using a cryptographic catch-up function. 83
KW-37
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The next on-line crypto device to be widely adopted was the KG-13^ Unlike the KW-
26, it was a general-purpose key generator, which meant that it could be used for more
than just teletypewriter security. Fully transistorized, it was smaller and lighter and was
suitable for a wide variety of uses. It could encrypt voice and, with the HY-2 vocoder,
became the backbone of the Autosevocomm voice encryption system in the 1960s. 6 *
From SIGSALY to Modern Voice Encryption
As soon as the war was over, the paleolithic SIGSALY was scrapped. Surely the U.S.
could find something smaller, lighter and cheaper. In the late 1940s AFSA developed a
voice encryption device called the AFSAY-816, which was used to encrypt the new secure
voice system between Arlington Hall and Nebraska Avenue. Using a primitive vacuum
tube key generation and pulse code modulation, it produced good voice quality. The
drawback was that it needed a 50 KHz carrier.
When computers came into general use in cryptology, NSA j udged that the AFSAY-816
was cryptographica lly suspect and replaced it with the KY-11, |
. |The KY-11, however, had the same drawbacks as the earlier AFSAY-816.
It was a large system and was kept in the communications center. It sucked up huge
swatches of bandwidth, making it appropriate for the microwave systems in the
Washington area, but hardly anywhere else. 65
Because it required communications center security, the KY-11 was not suitable for
general executive level use in Washington. To remedy the problems of size, weight, and
security protection, NSA developed the KY-1. It was packaged in a single cabinet about
half as high as an ordinary safe and was secured with a three-position combination lock. It
was distributed to very high-level users like the secretary of defense, secretary of state,
DCI and others. It was the first voice security system installed in private residences, and
one of the early models was placed in Eisenhower's farm in Gettysburg.
To use it must have been mildly frustrating, as it was a half-duplex, push-to-talk
system. Voice quality was high, but at a familiar cost - it required wideband voice
circuitry. By the mid-1960s, it had been replaced by the KY-3. 68
NSA's first entry in the narrowband sweepstakes was the KO-6, a multipurpose
equipment which could encrypt speech signals as well as others. It could compress and
digitize speech into a narrowband transmission system, but only at considerable cost. The
KO-6 weighed a ton, required three kilowatts of power, and, according to one NSA expert,
"provided almost intelligible narrowband secure voice." As a result, it was seldom used in
the voice mode. 67
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TEMPEST
During World War II, Bell Laboratories, under contract to develop various devices for
the Signal Corps, was working on a one-time\ tape mixing device called, a 131-B2.
Engineers in the lab noticed that every t ime the device stepped, a spike would appear on
an oscilloscope in another part of the lab
Bell Labs reported this to the Signal (Dorps, but the report attracted Tittle attention. So
the Bell engineers mounted an int ercept effort, copying and reading plain text from the
Army Signal Corps communications \
This time the Signal Corps tobk notice, and asked Bell Labs what could be done. The
Bell engineers found that the problem; was caused by
The resulting signal could emanate through the
They suggested that the problem could be corrected
by shielding the keying devices, by filtering the power lines, or by masking. They built a
modified mixer using both shielding and filtering. But the Signal Corps refused to buy it
because it virtually encapsulated the machine, making it difficult to work on and was
subject to heat buildup. Instead , they sent ja message to the field urging commanders to
their comnuinication centers to prevent hostile signal
control
monitoring
68^
Germans.
131
The Germans knew about this probl
plain text from close-in ranges. The USSR,
very likely learned it from captured
governments knew about it, too. Despite
during the war. For all practical purposes
1951, while working on the very same
and AFSA set to work on the problem
however, and while equipment was being d
requiring that all COMINT activities control
communications center. As an alternative,
teleprinters chatter away simultaneously,
masking. 69
em and understood the potential for obtaining
, jwhich was using the technique by the 1950s,
There is evidence that other Allied
;hisj, the Americans forgot what they had learned
| it was rediscovered by a CIA technician in
B2 mixers. CIA notified AFSA of its findings,
i
Designing cquntermeasures required time,
'evgloped, AFSA issued instructions to the field
a zone 200 feet in all directions of the
, a commander could require that at least ten
the idea being that this would introduce
At this point, the newly established NSA decided to test all its equipment. The result -
everything radiated. Whether it was mixer s, keying devices, crypto equipment, EAM
machinery, or typewriters, it sent out a s ignal
Plain text was being broadcast through the
electromagnetic environment was full of it.
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Thus was the TEMPEST industry spawned. NSA initiated a joint project with the SCAs,
which in the early years discovered problems much more rapidly tha n it could design
solutions. In 1955 the p roblem of electromagnetic emanations wa£
[Moreover, there Was hard evidence that in t
lis one area the
Soviets were far ahead of the U.S. technologically and that America's East Bloc embassies
were all being penetrated. It was a Frankenstein House of Horrors. 70 .
The first big breakthrough was by I^aval Research Labs, whichXredesigned the
offending 131-B2 mixer and called it the IjlEL Mixer. NRL used a technique called low-
level keying, in which the power was lowered to such an extent that a signal p reviously
j The KW-
26 contained this circuitry, as did every crypto device after that. As long as the
communications center used the device at ihe suppressed keying mode rather than at full
power (an unwarranted assumption), it was: reasonably well protected. 71
By 1958 NSA was ready with the first generally applicable tempest standards, which
were published under JCS authority. According to the new guidelines, Department of
Defens e organizations could not use equipm ent that would radiate farther than the zone of
control, NSA published NAG-1, a TEMPEST bible that
established TEMPEST measurement techniques and standards. The new rules did not,
however, say anything about when the guidelines had to be met, nor did JCS budget
money to fix the problem. Funds had to come from the individual commands and had to
compete with all other funding priorities. Recognizing that the problem was far from
fixed, USCSB in 1960 established its first and only subcommittee, the Special Committee
on Compromising Emanations. 72 But many years would pass before TEMPEST standards
reached general acceptance.
''(h) (3)-P.L. 86-36
Notes
1. NSA/CSS Archives, ACC 6851, CBKI 61.
2. Colin B. Burke, "The Machine Age.Begins at OP-20-G: Or, Don't Do It This Way Again," presentation at the
1992 Cryptologic History Synjposium, 28 October 1992.
Jrfie Secret War," in CCH Series IV.V.7.18; Joel Shurkin, Engines of the Mind: A History of
3.
the. Computer (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984).
4. SRH-267.
5. Ibid.
6. Samuel S. Snyder, "The Influence of U.S. Cryptologic Organizations on the Digital Computer Industry," SRH
003.
7. Ibid.
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8. Ibid.; oral interview with Dr. Howard Campaigns, 29 June 1983, by Robert Farley, NSA OH-14-83.
9. NSASAB, "Technology for Special Purpose Processors," March 1978, in ACC 2745 1 , CBUI 3 1; and ACC 10896,
CBOC33. /
10. Douglas Hogan, "General and Special Purpose Computers: A Historical Look and Some Lessons Learned," 23
May 1986, unpublished manuscript in CCH files.
1 1 . Snyder, CCH series VI.D.3.7.
12. NSA/CSS Archives, ACC 10978, CBOC 33; ACC 6851, CBKI 61 ; ACC 10573, CBVB 57.
13. NSA/CSS Archives, ACC 11112, CBJtl 55.
14. Snyder ."Influences," NSA/CSS Archives, ACC 10978, CBOC 33; Phillips interview.
15. Phillips interview.
16. Snyder,"Influence"; NSASAB, "Technology. . .
17. Snyder, "Influence."
18. "Mechanization in Support of COMINT."
19. NSA/CSS Archives ACC 10978, H01-0601; Douglas Hogan.
20. Phillips interview.
21. Ibid.
22. Hogan, Snyder, "Influence."
23. Hogan. /
24. Hogan, Snyder, "Influence"; Phillips interview.
25. Memos by Samford/ and Engstrom, dated Jan and Apr 57, in CCH files.
26. Hogan, Howard Campaigne, "LIGHTNING," NSA Technical Journal, IV, 3 July 1959, 63-67; Tordella
interview, Kirby interview.
27. Hogan,Phillips/interview.
28. Phillips interview.
29. "History of ; AFSA/NSA Communications Center," correspondence file in CCH Series VI H.I.2.; "NSA's
Telecommunications Problems, 1952-1968," unpublished historical study available in CCH Series X.H.4.; George
Howe, "The Narative History of AFSA/NSA, Part V, Final Draft, Ch. XXVI-XXX," available in CCH.
30. "History/of AFSA/NSA Communications Center."
31. "Histor y of AFSA/NSA Communications Center"; videotape lecture on the history of NSA communications by
[ available in CCH.
32. "History of AFSA/ NSA Communications Center"; NSA/CSS Archives ACC 33707, H01-0108-6.
33. "NSA's Telecommunications Problems "
35. "History of AFSA/NSA Communications Center"; "NSA's Telecommunications Problems."
(b) (i)
lb) (3)-P.L. 86-36
(b) (3)-50 USC 403
(b) (3)-18 USC 798 ■ '
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36. "NSA Review of U.S. Cryptologic Effort . . .," in CCH Series VI.EE.l-;3.
37. George F. Howe, "Centralized COMINT Communications Centers: ThV Historical Record," unpublished
manuscript in CCH Series X.H.5.
38 | j yidieotape; Tordella interview; CAHA, ACC 33707,1161-0108-6. / /
39. "NSA's Telecommunications Problems. . .";
'The National Security Agency's Gray
Telephone System: Present and Future," Telecom Career Panel paper, 19iJuly 1982.
40. "NSA's Telecommunications Problems. .. ." /./
41. "Implementation of NSCID 7," CCH Series VLB.1.3.
42. Edward Fitzgerald, "A History of U .S/ Communications Security: Post-World War II,: unpublished
manuscript available in E324 j ^Theory of Wired Wheels/" 11 March 1955, in CCH Series VI EE.1.30;
McConnell manuscript available in CCH; Ryon A. Page, "The Wirdd Wheel in U.S. Communications Security,"
unpublished manuscript in CCH Series VI.F.l .21.
43. Fitzgerald.
44. Book lecture, 1991 Cry ptologic History Symposium, available on videotape in CCH.
45. Page.
46. Page; David Boak, A History of U.S. Communications Security, rev ed 1973 (The Dave Boak Lecture Series).
47. | paper; "Evolution of Equipment to provide COMSEC (lecture dated 1971) in CCH Series
VI.F.1.6.; Oral History interview with Howard Rosenblum/14 Aug 1991, by Robert Farley and Henry Schorreck,
NSA OH 03-91.
48. Fitzgerald.
49. Ibid.
50. Burns.
51. William Nolte, draft history of NSA, available in/CCH files.
52. "COMSEC Material (Historical) 1957-1970," iri CCH Series VI.F.1.3.
53. "COMSEC Historical Material."
64. Ibid. /
55. David Boak, written statement, Oct. 1994. /
56. Memo for the Chairman, USCSC, "Capsule History of the USCSB, 12 January 1970," from the Executive
Secretary, Thomas R. Chittenden, in COMSEC Historical Material.
57. Fitzgerald; "Manufacture of COMSEC Keying Materials (S3)," in CCH Series VI.F.1.12.
| 2 Feb. 1993, by Charles Baker and Tom Johnson, NSA OH 2- 93.
58. Oral interview,
59. Colons, V.I, 45.
60. "Historical Study of NSA Telecommunications, Annual, 1973-1975," in CCH Series VI.A.1.10.
61. David Boak, A History of US. Communications Security (The David Boak Lecture Series), 1973.
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62. Ibid.
63. Boak; Howard Barlow speech at 1991 Cryptologic History Symposium.
64. "Evolution of Equipment to provide COMSEC" (lecture dated 1971) in CCH Series VI.F.1.6.
manuscript available in CCH.
65. Boak.
66.
67.
68. Ibid.
69. Ibid.
70. Ibid.
71. Ibid.
72. Ibid.
'Evolution of Equipment. . Boak.
'Evolution of Equipment.
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Chapter 6
Cryptology at Mid-decade
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THE EARLY ASSESSMENTS
It has become exceedingly difficult to obtain significant/information from covert 'operations
inside Russia. The security zones at the border, the general restrictions in theii interior, the
; si, \
thousands of security police, and the innumerable informers among the populace are brutally
effective in limiting infiltration, exfiltration, and usefulness of agents, 'therefore, 4fa rriust more
and more depend on science and technology to assist and to complement the b ! e : st efforts of
classical intelligence. / \\
/ The KillianiBoard, 1955
The Eisenhower adniinistratipn's intelligence focus was riot on traditional espionage -
it was on technical intelligence; whence, Eisenhower knew/ through personal experience
during World War II, he could obtain vast quantities of information. His concern over the
apparent breakdown in COMINT during the Korean War caused him to refocus again and
again on NSA. Reports about NSA's performance began io flow back to blip alnjost from
the moment the Agency was created. The reports are/ important todayj ^because they
indicate the direction that cryptology was to travel in subsequent years.
The Robertson Committee
The first reports on NSA were a product of President Eisenhower's conceirh with Soviet
Capabilities. In the summer of 19S3, the/ National Security Council began
examining America's strategic vulnerabilities, and, with it, the mtelligencjeisysteni that
must provide the warning. But Canine adamantly opposed granting COMINT! clearances to
the members of the panel, and USCIB backed him./ Instead, Canine estdbliihfed a largely
in-house examination of COMINT, chaired by Dr. H/ P. Robertson of California ^Institute of
Technology, a member of Canine's advisory panel, the NSA Scientific AdiviBory Bo^rd
(NSASAB). Four of the seven members were frorii NSASAB, and the remaining two were
from the Office of the Secretary of Defense. 1
Robertson reported during th e dark days after "Black Friday," when
was still an unrevealed mystery.
The immediate result of this was the intercept, in 1954,
Soviiet
This opened up a new world
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The committee also recognized the indivisability of COMINT\and ELINT and
stressed the effort to fuse both sources into asingle report. 2 /
But Rober tson made plain that NS A must be in the game for the long pull . The long
pull was Soviet and he urged an all-out attack on the new
systems introduced in the early 1950s. His committee recommended the development and
deployment of new intercept [ equipment. 3
The Hoover Commission
The Hoover Commission was a far larger effort. Established by Eisenhower in 1954
and chaired by former president Herbert Hoover, it was at the time the most thorough re-
examination of the federal government ever attempted. Hoover subcommittees delved
into every cranny of the bureaucracy seeking improvements and economies. One such
subcommittee was a task force chaired by General Mark Clark to investigate intelligence
activities. The committee looked closely at NSA.*
The thrust of the Hoover Commission set the mold for all subsequent panels.
Responding to the entreaties of Canine, it recommended increased authority for NSA in
virtually every area of its operation. NSA should have the authority to prescribe
equipment standards; it should prescribe all intercept and processing standards; it should
inspect service cryptologic training and direct modifications as necessary. There was
almost no area in which it did not feel that NSA should be further empowered. 5
What the panel did for NSA it also recommended for the SCAs. They should have
more authority within their respective services, and each should be at the level of a major
command. At the time only USAFSS was at that level, although ASA was granted major
command status before the report was published. This left only NSG at a lower level
within its service. It noted that "largely because of its status as a major command, the
AFSS has developed a dynamic and promising program for recruiting, developing and
holding on to technically qualified military career personnel." 6 The committee noted the
dismal record of the three services in assigning people to cryptologic posts, and it
recommended that security strictures be changed to permit military personnel offices to
understand the importance of the jobs. 7
More controversial was the panel's recommendation that NSA acquire additional
authority over ELINT. Canine, who saw himself teetering over the black hole of
interservice fighting, opposed this. He was having enough trouble unifying COMINT,
without trying to swallow ELINT whole. USCIB noted that NSCID 17 had just been issued,
and it urged that this new approach be tried before considering further integration of
elint. (The impact of NSCID 17 will be discussed in chapter 7.) 8
Clark and his committee proposed an all-out attack on Soviet high-grade ciphers,
equivalent, in their words, to the Manhattan Project. It would require the best minds in
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the country, equipped with the finest resources money could buy, but it would be worth it
if even a portion of the Soviet ) systems were unlocked. Canine hailed
the potential resource augmentation with glee, but cautioned against a total commitment
before NSA had thoroughly analyzed the prospects for successs. USCIB supported him. 9
Cryptologic personnel requirements weighed heavily on the committee. Clark urged
an improved grade structure, including the addition of supergrades, higher pay for
consultants, improve;! assignment of service officer personnel, better perquisites for NSA
people assigned overseas (to be the equivalent of those received by CIA), and NSA
exemption from the Classification Act. To improve the revolving door nature of military
intercept operators (few of whom stayed in the service past their initial enlistment), Clark
urged the assignment of civilians to intercept positions overseas. 10
Clark and/his committee were concerned about two other potential problems. The first
was the state of COMINT requirements, which were expressed in a document called the
Master Requirements List. This, they said, was about the size of the Washington phone
directory/and about as specific. And since customers wanted COMINT to tell them
everything, without narrowing the target further, NSA simply specified its own
requirements. This had been going on so long that there was danger that the cryptologic
community would become completely isolated from its customers and insensitive to
therd. 11
/ What was occurring in requirements, they felt, was also true in security. COMINT
security had become so tight that cryptologists were isolated from their customers. In time
of war there was real danger that essential information would not get to the battlefield
because of clearance restrictions. Thus the system would defeat itself and become a
vestigial appendage. 12 It was a debate that would rage for years within the intelligence
community.
The Killian Board
Eisenhower's preoccupation with the Soviet nuclear threat spawned a number of
committees to look at American vulnerability. By far the most important of those was the
Scientific Advisory Committee, commonly known as the Killian Board. In July of 1954
Eisenhower asked Dr. James R. Killian of MIT to head a study of the country's capability
to warn of surprise attack. Killian named a panel of the elite from academia, the scientific
community, and the military.
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Dr. James Killian, shown here with General Samford at NSA
The committee quickly came to the conclusion that spying on the Soviet Union in the
classical sense (agents and that sort of thing) was not the answer. The Soviet Bloc was too
hard to penetrate. Warning, if it were to come in time, would have to come from technical
intelligence like COMINT, ELINT, and photography. This recommendation was to begin a
revolution in the way the government thought about, organized, and used intelligence.
From that time on, technical intelligence became the "answer" to the problem of strategic
warning. It would remain so for the duration of the Cold War.
As part of the Killian Board, the Land Panel was to achieve a measure of renown.
Chaired by the farsighted Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid camera, the panel was to
concern itself with the development of new reconnaissance programs. The Land Panel
came to have a profound influence on the future of overhead photography, the U-2
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program, and intelligence collection satellites. It was.this group that first envisioned
COMINT and ELINT intercept packages aboard orbiting satellites.
Land believed that science maide anything possible. I
The Jackson Report \
The most personal and confidential report on NSA was by William H. Jackson. One of
the original members of the Brownell|Committee, Jackson was appointed by Eisenhower
to monitor NSA's progress and to m&ke periodic progress reports through Sherman
Adams, Eisenhower's chief of staff. In Meetings with Jackson, the president expressed his
personal concern that NSA should be effective, and Jackson kept him apprised of what still
needed to be done.
Jackson insisted that NSA needed 4 strong research and development organization,
and he regarded the appointment of a director of research in 1956 as a significant step
forward. A more difficult matter was the naming of a chief civilian deputy. Canine
insisted on running his own show and did not want, and refused to appoint, a civilian
deputy. Only when Samford came aboard in 1956 and quickly named a civilian, Joseph
Ream, as deputy was Jackson satisfied on this point.
Yet a third organizational problem w&s the matter of a point of contact for COMINT
within DoD. Brownell had envisioned that COMINT matters would be handled at least as
high as the assistant secretary level. This high-level attention had not occurred, and
Jackson reported in 1956 that the nominaripoint of contact, General Graves B. Erskine,
head of the Office of Special Operations, normally turned COMINT over to a lower-ranking
staffer. In Jackson's view, this level of concern was wholly inadequate to the task at hand.
\
The objective of all th is organizational toi ing and fro-ing was to put NSA in position to
mount a full-scale attack "Only after such an attack has been made,"
Jackson noted, "can we determine safely, in the event of failure, that the effort is hopeless
and the annual expenditure of forty odd millions can be saved." 14
NSA was clearly still on probation. It was a probationary period that would not end
with a bang but would slowly fade away. The corner was not turned during either the
Eisenhower or Kennedy administration. NSA did not come off probation until the
presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson.
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19S6
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Certain years mark watersheds in cryptologic history. Nineteen fifty-six was such a
year. Twin crises, Suez and Hungary, came virtually together in time to pressure a new
NSA-managed COMINT system that had never been stressed in such a way. The
conjunction of crises, rolled into a COMINT alert called. Yankee, resulted in short and long
term changes to the system. It was a year for cryptologists to remember.
Suez
Suez was a significant benchmark
in the postwar American involvement
in the Middle East. It also represented
the greatest crisis in the post- World
War II Western Alliance.
The creation of Israel in 1947 had
been accompanied by war, dislocation,
and bitterness. In 1952 the Egyptian
government had been captured by
hard-line pan-Arab, anti-Israeli
nationalist military officers headed by
Gamal Abdel Nasser. When Nasser
officially took over the government in
1954, he set a course which resulted in
a distinct tilt toward the East. When,
in 1956, the Western nations hedged on
earlier commitments to fund a Nile
dam at Aswan, Nasser courted the
Gamal Abdel Nasser
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Soviet Union, and eventually secured finding there. Meanwhile, his relationships with
Great Britain grew so strained that in Jtily of 1956 he nationalized the Suez Canal. At this
point Great Britain and France began planning a military invasion to take back the canal.
At the last minute they took Israel into the scheme, and they got the Israelis to agree to
launch an invasion of their own. The restiltant fighting would give Britain and France the
opportunity to come in as "peacemakers;" with sufficient armed forces to take back the
canal. They did their best to keep the scheme secret from the American; government,
whose attitude toward the Arabs appeared to be more even-handed.
The Middle East in 1956
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But the transition was only
in its early stages when, on 29 October,
the Israeli army struck Egypt in the
Sinai.
Secretary of State John Foster
Dulles expressed shock and outrage.
The outrage was real - the shock was
made up. His own brother, CIA chief
Allen Dulles, had sent him two
national intelligence estimates earlier
in the fall which predicted the
invasion.
Dulles was furious.
Jobn Foster Dalles, Eisenhower's
secretary of state, played a central role
throughout the Suez Crisis of 1956.
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Timely reporting aVer a, period of months could have left no doubt
within the administration that Soviet diplomacy ..consisted of posturing. They were not
going to go down to the Middle East to\ba|i\ out anyone. Forces just weren*t,moving. The
Soviets had their hands quite full with Hungary, tyhose crisis had flopped d° w n "'directly on
top of Suez. " \ \\
But they in no way\approximated what was happening at. the
ministerial level. \ \ \\ \ \ |
| \ \ \ Such a strong alliance could not be
torn asunder by Suez. As Peter Wright said ift his book Spycaicher, "Only GCHQ, which
had a formal charter of cooperation with its Ariierican counterpart, the National Security
Agency (NSA), under terms of the 1948 UKUSA ajn-eement,\remained relatively immune
to the turbulent currents which battered the. previously intimate wartime Anglo-
American intelligence relationship." 15
Hungary \
For the Soviets, the real problem in 19$6 was the\East Bloc, ^Domestic Hungarian
unrest culminated in a revolution that Sovifet troops p(it down violently in November of
1956. \
The Hungarian revolution was a surprise to the; intelligence community. But as
events gathered speed, the Soviet reaction was not. I \ I provided fairly complete
indicators concerning Soviet military unit movements throughout the crisis. As Soviet
forces m oved into Hungary and concentrated o n Budapest ik the waning days of October,
jtraeked and identified the participants.1 \
little else available to the White House about the unfolding Soviet reaction.
J^ther?
was very
The National Security Agency did not specifically predict that Soviet forces, would
become involved - prediction was not its role. Th ere was enougt
to lead one to that conclusion prior to the
4 November Soviet take over of the capital. But no one drew the strings into a bund leX It
^ poorly understood by customers.
was all a hodgepodge of
It was an opportunity lostV.
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The Yankee Alert
Suez occurred on 29 October: Hungary broke on 4 November.
Nineteen fifty-six was a bad time for NSA to get involved in crisis. The organization j
was in the middle of its move from downtown Washington to Fort Meade. Some analytical I
branches were in newly established quarters at Fort Meade, while others had remained?
behind at Arlington Hall. Communications between the two geographical areas were;
temporary, and much of the routine traffic was being couri ered four times a day front
Washington. |
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Having no NSOC, NSA had to take extraordinary steps to deal with the crisis, f
NSA technical support to the field was slow in coming.
Lebanon, 1958
The Eisenhower administration was pulled into the Middle East quite by accident in
1956. But the president quickly yanked U.S. foreign policy into line with the new
situation. In January 1957, in a State of the Union address focusing on the Middle East,
he proclaimed what became known as the Eisenhower Doctrine: the United States would
use its armed forces to help any country requesting assistance in maintaining its
independence "against overt armed aggression from any nation controlled by
International Communism." 22 Just two short years later, he employed the new doctrine in
its first test. The occasion was Lebanon.
Nasser had continued to extend his pan-Arabism, and he was the idol of the Middle
East. In January 1958 he announced the formation of the United Arab Republic, an
amalgam of Egypt and Syria, with Egypt clearly the dominant partner. The new UAR
then launched a propaganda assault on the more conservative regimes in Lebanon,
Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. An arms race involving the U.S., Britain, France, and the
USSR produced a Middle East that was "armed and dangerous."
On 14 J uly pro-Nasser forces overthrew the Iraqi monarchy and assassinated the royal
family. Camille Chamoun, who headed the pro- Western government of Lebanon, believed
that he was next and hurriedly requested American assistance. Eisenhower believed that
Nasserists were about to take over the oil supply and decided, on the spur of the moment,
and after consulting with virtually no one, to come to Chamoun's assistance. He ordered
the Sixth Fleet to the Eastern Mediterranean and instructed the chairman of the JCS,
General Twining, to put Marines ashore in Beirut the next day. Harold MacMillan, the
British prime minister, requested that it be a joint operation, but Eisenhower wanted a
unilateral action, and he suggested that British paratroops be deployed to Jordan rather
than Lebanon. 23
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1956 in History ,\ \
By the end of 1958, the United Stales was firmly in the Middle East,
\By the time of the 1967 Ara b-Israeli War,
The problem
proved difficult to address because of thie wild mood swings between somnolence and war
in the Mi ddle East. But the cryptologic Community eventually had a core of expertise and
resource s!
The Hungarian crisis marked the downing of a new capability.
Unfortun ately, such sophisticated analysis, available in later decades, simply did not
exist in 1956.1 T~
r
be learned.
It was an art form that had to
As for crisis response, all was chaos. The cryptologic community proved incapable of
marshalling its forces in a flexible fashioH to deal with developing trouble spots. The
events of the year did not demonstrate success - they simply provided a case study to learn
from. \
The Reorganization
I
Ralph Canine departed NSA on 23 November 1956. But before he did, he hired the
management firm of McKinsey and Company to look at NSA's organization from top to
bottom. The McKinsey study resulted in a thorough revamping of the way NSA functions
that still had repercussions through the 1980s]
Canine was concerned with primarily twojquestions: would operations function more
effectively on a functional or geographic organization, and to what extent should staff
functions be centralized? j
McKinsey introduced a modified geographical concept. Organization for COMINT would
be along target (i.e., country or geographical^, lines, but within that scheme, specific
processes like cryptanalysis, and resource tasking, would often appear
in separate organizations. The new scheme brought with it a greater focus on targets, but
retained many aspects of the factory-like origins of the business.
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When the team presented its findings to Canine only a few/a'ays before his retirement,
it showed him a new organizational concept. Gone was the aid numerical organizational
system, replaced by pronounceable syllabic office designators. Thus t)DO became PROD,
and within PROD were four major offices: / j
GENS-
ADVA
ACOM
ALLO
The principle of pronounceable syllables was carried through the Agency. For
instance, MATH was the Mathematical Research Division within R&p; RADE was the
Radio Equipment Division; STED was the Communications Security Division; PERS was
personnel; MPRO (pronounced em-pro) was machine' processing; SEC wis security, etc. It
was a profoundly rational way to designate offices, but it did not do a, very good job of
obscuring office functions from an inquiring public. Ultimately, that wais to spell the end
of the pronounceability craze, although the basic organizational scheme Would continue to
the end of the Cold War.
As to the second question, relating to centralization of staff functionsjMcKinsey came
down heavily on the side of decentralization. The firm viewed the director, as being far too
involved in day-to-day management of Production and only distantly concerned with the
easier-to-manage COMSEC and R&D organizations. To correct $h!is, McKinsey
recommended that a virtually independent Prod uction function be created. AH ancillary
functions would be gathered up under PROD,
Jand even some
logistics functions. It was a powerhouse organization.
The director's staff was reduced in proportion to the matters transferred to PROD.j
Gone were such offices as Headquarters Commandant and Adjutant Generals, Army-typef
organizations whose very meaning4s obscure today. To manage a potentially unwieldyj
Production organization, McKinsey created the staff system that carried through the Cold
War: the 02, 03, 04, etc., way of stajf organization. j
By far the biggest org anizati on in the Agency was GENS. Out of just over | I people
assigned to PROD, almos ^ [ called GENS ho me. The GEN S organizational system, ak
modified by a 1957 re-reorganization, created a organizationa l schetoe thajt
retained its character for more than thirty years.
GENS-21
GENS-1
JGENS-3
mdGENS- 6
j SENS-4f
GENS-S ,
McKinsey was concerned about COMSEC. Once the move to Fort Meade took place, 'it
would be physically divorced from the rest of NSA. To accommodate, this, the firim
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recommended special decentralization authority for COMSEC, including certain aspects of
physical security, supply, and engineering.
The R&D organization, said McKinsey, should stick solely to research and
development. Development of off-the-shelf equipment applications, local component
fabrication, equipment repair, or anything that involved known or proven technologies,
should come under some other organization - most notably, PROD. Regarding the fielding
of COMSEC equipments, unless it involved pure research, it was not properly an R&D
function, McKinsey said, and should be resubordinated to COMSEC. This was an issue,
however, that would be replayed many times during the Cold War,. 27
THE MOVE
It is desired that you take immediate action to recommend for my approval a suitable location for
the Armed Forces Security Agency within a 25-mile radius of Washington . . . the new site survey
should be carried out as a matter of high priority
William C. Foster, Deputy Secretary of Defense, 1951
When AFSA was created in 1949, it was without its own facilities. The new
organization was forced to borrow space at Arlington Hall and Naval Security Station
(NSS).
In an appendix to the document that created AFSA, the JCS directed that AFSA
prepare a plan consolidating COMINT and COMSEC into a single facility. After studying the
problem, AFSA concluded that the two could not be consolidated into their existing
buildings at Arlington Hall and Nebraska Avenue. In its September 1949 report to the
JCS, AFSAC pointed out that the buildings in use at Arlington Hall were temporary
structures designed for wartime use. 28
In the autumn of 1949, with the explosion of the Soviet nuclear device, atomic hysteria
was sweeping Washington. To its original charge, the JCS added one other - that a
standby location be procured which was outside the Washington area to minimize the
possibility that American cryptologic capabilities be destroyed on the first day of a war. 29
Commander Arthur Enderlin, whom Admiral Stone had appointed to chair the study
committee, was adamantly opposed to a standby location. He and his committee
considered it a waste of money and refused to recommend an alternate site. The JCS
demanded a recommendation, but Enderlin refused. Stone reiterated the order - Enderlin
remained unmoved. Stone fired Enderlin and in his place appointed Captain Thomas
Dyer, one of the leading cryptanalysts of World War II. Dyer was a known advocate of the
alternate location concept. 30
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But then Dyer turned the solution on its head. He recommended that the alternate
become primary - this would effectively move the cryptologic headquarters out of
Washington. Dyer carried the day, and his committee began to look at possible relocation
sites in the spring of 1950. The selection criteria were developed over a period of months,
but generally focused on the following requirements:
a. Be within twenty-five miles of a city of at least 200,000
b. Have work space totalling at least 700,000 square feet
c. Possess a "reasonably equable climate"
d. Be suitable for complete physical isolation by fences and the like
e. Be accessible to mainline air, rail, and highways
f. Not be less than twenty miles from the Atlantic Ocean
g. Possess dependable and secure water and electric power sources
h. Be accessible to commercial and military communications 31
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The basic ground rule was that the location selected had to be on an existing military
base. The move was to be completed by July 1955. One option the board looked at was to
select a site that already possessed a building - like a hermit crab, APSA could simply
crawl in after modifying the shell. Locations in Kansas City, Tulsa, and St. Louis were
considered. Another option was to construct a new building on a military installation.
The board looked at Fort Knox, Kentucky; Fort Benjamin Harrison, near Indianapolis;
Fort Meade, halfway between Baltimore and Washington; Brooks Air Force Base, near
San Antonio, Texas; and Rocky Mountain Arsenal, near Denver. 38
Then in early 1951 the board sent AFSAC two recommendations - if the existing
structure criterion were used, Kansas City should be the choice, and if a new building were
wanted, Fort Knox was the way to go. This produced great controversy in AFSAC. Some
pressed for an existing structure, maintaining that the lower cost and quick availability
would help meet the July 1955 deadline. Others opposed moving into someone else's
offices - that had been tried at Arlington Hall and Nebraska Avenue and had not worked.
The Air Force pressed for Fort Knox, contending that it was less vulnerable to a Soviet
nuclear strike. Stone and Major General Canine (who would soon become director of
AFSA) both opted for Fort Meade. But in the end AFSAC voted for Fort Knox. The JCS
approved the Fort Knox option in April, but only after another heated argument about the
advisability of moving to a relatively isolated location. Many, including Stone and
Canine, were concerned about the critical lack of housing in the Fort Knox environs, and
some wondered if the their civilians would accept the choice. 33
While orders were being cut and contract proposals were being written for the Fort
Knox construction, AFSAC members argued vehemently over the functions to be moved.
Dyer was the author of a plan to split comint into two parts - three-fourths of it would
move to Kentucky, while some residual functions would stay in Washington, along with
most of COMSEC and some liaison offices. He was opposed by Admiral Joseph Wenger, who
felt that splitting COMINT would be disastrous. Ultimately, Wenger won, and it was
decided to leave COMSEC in Washington, while all of COMINT would move to Fort Knox and
Arlington Hall would be closed. 34
The board knew Fort Knox to be objectionable to some of the civilian employees
because of its distance from Washington. The lack of housing was worrisome, as was the
rigid segregation practiced in Kentucky in 1951. But AFSA pressed ahead with the
selection anyway, until a startling thing happened: Someone decided to ask the civilians
what they thought.
No one knows now who originated the civilian opinion survey, but by May of 1951 it
was being circulated at Arlington Hall and Nebraska Avenue. The results were a show-
stopper. Most of the civilians planned to resign rather than go to Fort Knox. 35 Without
them, AFSA would find it difficult to operate. The problem had to be fixed.
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The matter came to a head in October of 1951. Deputy Secretary of Defense William C.
Foster told Canine, the new director of AFSA, that he had a problem. AFSA's civilians
were not in favor of the move to Fort Knox, and neither were AFSA's two most important
non-DoD customers, the State Department and CIA. Canine went directly to see General
of the Armies Omar Bradley, the Army chief of staff. Bradley told him to meet with the
JCS. At the JCS meeting in early December the Fort Knox move was cancelled, and
Canine was directed to appoint another site selection board.
Canine's new selection board, still chaired by Dyer, but including some civilians, held
hurried meetings in January and February of 1952. The new site had to be between five
and twenty-five miles from the center of Washington. This placed it within the postulated
blast zone of then-existing Soviet atomic weapons and thus violated a JCS stipulation that
the new AFSA site had to be at least twenty-five miles from the Washington Monument.
But Soviet atomic weapons were progressing all the time, and the twenty-five mile limit
no longer made sense anyway. The JCS could have either atomic invulnerability or a
skilled civilian work force, but apparently it could not have both. 36
The board looked at several sites in suburban Virginia, including Fort Belvoir, some
land along the George Washington Parkway inhabited by the Bureau of Roads (later to
become famous as the site of the new CIA headquarters building), and Fort Hunt. In
Maryland, it considered several sites within the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center,
White Oak (site of the Naval Ordnance Laboratory), Andrews Air Force Base, and Fort
Meade.
Of those, Fort Meade was the only one on the original list. It was twenty-two miles
from the Monument, the furthest removed of any site considered the second time around.
Despite the distance from Washington, transportation difficulties would be solved by a
new parkway then under construction between Washington and Baltimore. There was
plenty of vacant land on Fort Meade for construction of headquarters and life support
buildings. It was the obvious choice, and on 5 February it became official. (Considering
that Canine said he had already selected Fort Meade himself, and had informed Lovett of
that, the proceedings of the board may well have been window dressing.) 37
Fort Meade, named for the Civil War victor at Gettysburg, inhabited a thickly wooded
13,500 acre tract precisely halfway between Baltimore and Washington. Originating as
Camp Meade during World War I, it had been a training facility during both World Wars I
and II. During World War II some 3.5 million men passed through on their way to Europe
and at the peak of the war 70,000 people inhabited the post. After the war it became a
headquarters, first for the 2nd Army and later (in 1966) for the 1st U.S. Army.
When Canine first looked at it, Fort Meade consisted of hundreds and hundreds of
temporary wooden structures being used as barracks, offices and training facilities, with
only a few permanent brick buildings. The corner of the post that NSA proposed to use
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was uninhabited, but was near a major intersection - the new Baltimore-Washington
Parkway and Maryland Route 32. 38
The new building would be U-shaped with double cross-members, designated the
center and west corridors. Entry would be in the middle of the west corridor, the portion of
the building facing Route 32. At 1.4 million square feet, it would be the third largest
government building in Washington, smaller only than the Pentagon and the new State
Department building. But it was designed for the AFSA population in 1951, and it did not
take into consideration the growth that took place up to mid-decade, which left the new
building critically short of space. The only solution was to leave someone behind, and that
"someone" became the COMSEC organization, which remained at Nebraska Avenue until
another building was completed in 1968. 39
In 1954 a contract was awarded to two co-prime contractors, Charles H. Tompkins
Company of Washington, D.C., and the J.A. Jones Company of Charlotte, North Carolina.
The contract price was $19,944,452. Ground-breaking occurred on 19 July 1954. When
the building was completed, the total cost turned out to be $35 million, an overrun of
almost 100 percent. 40
Barracks under construction, 1954
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A few miscellaneous facts wowed the local community. It had the longest
unobstructed corridor in the country, 980 feet long (center corridor). At its birth it had a
German-made pneumatic tube system that could carry papers at twenty-five feet per
second and could handle 800 tubes per hour. The cafeteria could seat 1,400, and the
auditorium (later dedicated to William Friedman), 500. As its new occupant, NSA would
become the largest employer in Anne Arundel County. 41 It was a far cry indeed from the
quaint but antiquated Arlington Hall, the stately Naval Security Station, and the firetrap
A and B buildings at Arlington Hall.
NSA handled the move in stages. There was an "interim move," which put parts of
NSA's operation into temporary quarters on Fort Meade. This had the advantage of
moving the operation gradually so that large parts of it were not shut down for any period
of time. The new operations building would not be ready for occupancy until 1957, and so
the interim move also had the advantage of placing cryptologists at the new location in
advance of the July 1955 deadline.
Headquarters construction, 1955, south wing
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It began with an interim move to four brick barracks constructed for NSA use in 1954
just behind the proposed site for the main complex. The first to arrive, in November of
1954, was a contingent of 149 Marine guards to provide security. The other 2,000 plus
people taking part in the interim move included virtually the entire population of GENS,
plus enough communicators, personnel, and logistics people to keep them going. Heat for
the operation was provided by an old steam engine which was brought in on the old
Baltimore, Washington and Annapolis tracks, and was installed in a small copse of trees,
which still exists, between the present OPS2A and the barracks area. (In fact, the original
barracks themselves, now converted to living quarters, also still exist.)
GENS and its support staff became an outpost, connected to the main headquarters by
inadequate electrical communications. Most classified material was couriered back and
forth four times a day - the electrical circuits were reserved for only the most critical and
time-sensitive information. 42
The NSA operations building in 19S7
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To NSA's military population, the move to Fort Meade was a matter of routine. The
military moved frequently, and the relatively cloistered atmosphere of a rural Army post
was closer to the normal state of affairs. Family housing was of the two-story brick
variety, constructed under the Wherry Housing Act. More would be. needed, and over
2,500 new Wherry units were planned to accommodate the increased military population
occasioned by NSA's move. 43
For civilians, however, it was an entirely different matter. The move to Fort Meade
was initially contemplated nervously by a standoffish civilian population. Most lived in
Virginia and Washington and faced a long commute over narrow and traffic-clogged roads
through the heart of a major metropolitan area. There was no beltway.to take traffic
around Washington - the trip north would have to be via Georgia Avenue, Colesville Road,
New Hampshire Avenue and other city streets. The only plus to this situation was the
brand new Baltimore-Washington Parkway, whose projected completion date was January
1955. That would take care of the drive north from Anacostia and would mark a very
significant reduction in the driving time.
For those who did not own cars (a significant number in the early 1950s), there was
public transportation. Although the old Baltimore, Washington and Annapolis Railroad,
which had a spur that ran across the street from the planned NSA facility, had closed its
passenger service in 1935, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad still operated commuter train
service from Washington's Union Station to Laurel. For $1.82 per day, one could travel
round trip to Laurel and back in thirty-six minutes aboard one of the two trains operating
each morning and afternoon. Once in Laurel, the commuter could take the railroad-
operated shuttle bus to Fort Meade for an additional round trip fare of 500 ; it required
twenty-three minutes each way.
Unfortunately, the train and bus schedules did not match very well, and there was no
bus service at all for a commuter catching the late train. For the early train, the total one-
way commuting time from Union Station to NSA was one hour and twenty-three minutes,
not including the time required to get from one's residence to Union Station. Both
Greyhound and Trailways offered bus service from downtown Washington to Laurel in just
thirty-seven minutes, and at 99f£ per round trip, it was a bargain. But neither service
brought passengers to Laurel in time to catch the shuttle to Fort Meade, so commuters
would be left high and dry in Laurel. For urbanites used to a short commute to Arlington
Hall, this was not a happy prospect. 44
For most, this meant picking up the family and moving to the Maryland suburbs. To
help with the move, NSA created the Meademobile, a trailer parked between A and B
Buildings at Arlington Hall. The Meademobile carried information about Fort Meade and
surroundings, including real estate ads, school and church information, and locations of
shopping areas. On Saturdays NSA ran a special bus to Fort Meade so that employees
could look over the area. For those who were still unsure, NSA announced that a move to
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Fort Meade would be regarded as a PCS, and the government would pay to move household
effects. For many, that was the decider. 45
The closest community of any size was Laurel. Housing prices in Laurel ranged from
$8,990 for two bedroom homes to $10,990 for three bedroom homes with basements. There
was also a supply of apartments which could be had for rents ranging from $79.50 to
$112.50 per month. In the other direction was the waterside community of Severna Park,
whose houses ranged in price from $6,000 to $16,000. Waterfront lots could also be
purchased in the subdivision of Ben Oaks, but the lots alone sometimes ran as high as a
finished house in other areas. A little farther afield was Glen Burnie, where housing
prices ranged from $5,995 to over $10,000. South was the planned community of
Greenbelt, in the Washington suburbs. This was originally built with government
subsidies, and a house there could be had for as low as $4,700. Single bedroom apartments
rented for $51 and up. 48 Columbia had not been built yet.
The Meademobile at Arlington Hall Station, 1954
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The Saturday bus to Fort Meade, 20 April 1954
Whatever NSA did to entice civilians out to Fort Meade, it worked. Early estimates of
civilian attrition by a panicky personnel office had ranged as high as 30 percent, but the
actual attrition rate was less than two percentage points higher than would normally have
been expected had there been no move at all.* 8 By anyone's standards (except for the
COMSEC population left behind at Nebraska Avenue), the move was a success.
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(b) (1)
(b) (3J-P.L. 86-36
(b) (3)-50 USC 403
(b) (3)-18 USC 798
•'(b) (3)-P.L. 86-36
UMBRA
Notes
1 . Howe, draft report on the Robertson Committee, in CCH Series' VT.X.l .4.
2. Robertson report, in CCH Series VI.X.1.6.
3. Ibid.
4. "Report on Intelligence Activities in the Federal Government, Prepared for the Commission ori Organization of
the Executive Branch of the Government by the Task Force on Intelligence Activities," [The iClark Committee of
the Hoover Commission] App. 1, Part 1: The National Security Agency, May 1955, in CCH Series! VI.C.1.8.
5. Ibid.
6. Eisenhower Library papers, available in CCH Series XVI.
7. Hoover Commission.
8. Ibid; Eisenhower Library papers. /
9. Hoover Commission; Eisenhower Library papers.
•10. Hoover Commission.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
14. Eisenhower Library papers.
15. Peter Wright (with Paul Greengrass), Spy Catcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior In telligence
Officer (N ew York, Viking Penguin, 1987), 98. The details of the Suez crisis are well documented in£
The Suez Crisis: A Brief COMINT History, U.S. Cryptologic History, Special Series, Crisis Collection,
V.2 (Ft. Meade: NSA.1988).
21. Ibid.
22. T.G. Fraser, The USA and the Middle East Since World War II (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 73.
!
5
23. Stephen A. Ambrose, Eisenhower, Volume 2: The President (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), 469-73.
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25. Ibid.
27. The McKinsey study and documents pertaining thereto are contained in ACC 26115, CBNE 48 and in the
Garman Study. Personnel figures came from ACC 39741, HO-0311-4.
28. CCH Series V.F.6.1.
29. CCH Series V.F.5.I., VXAA.1.5.
(b) (1)
30. CCH Series VI.AA.1.5.
(b) (3J-P.L. 86-36
(b) (3)-50 USC 403
(b) (3) -IS USC 798
31. CCH Series V.F.5.1.
32. CCH Series V.F.5.1. and VI.AA.1.5.
33. CCH Series VI.AA.1.5.
34. CCH Series V.F.5.1., VI.AA.1.5..
35. CCH Series V.F.5.2..
36. CCH Series V.F.5.1.
37. CCH Series V.FiS.l.
38. CCH Series Vl.D.2.5.
39. NSA/CSS Archives ACC 26404, CBOM 16.
40. CCH Series VI AA.1.1.
41. Washington Post, 20 June 1957
42. VI.AA.1.1.; "Study of the Security Division," Feb 1955, in CCH Series VI.G.1.1.
43. Memo, G. B. Erskine to Secretary of Defense, 21 May 1954, in CCH files.
44. CCH Series VI.AA.1.3.
45. CCH Series VI.AA.1.1.
46. CCH Series VI.AA.1.3.
47. CCH Series VI.AA.1.3.
48. CCH Series VI.E. 1.4.
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RA
Chapter 7
The Eisenhower Reforms
THE POST-CRISIS CENTRALIZATION OF THE SIGINT SYSTEM
Following the mid-decade crises of Hungary, Suez, and Sputnik, President Eisenhower
instigated a thorough reexamination of the intelligence system. For NSA, this meant
sweeping changes and new challenges.
Criticomm
The long-stalled COMINT Comnet proposal was not jarred loose until the Sputnik crisis
of 1957. Sputnik came as a complete surprise to the Eisenhower administration.
Following as it did after Suez, Hungary, and Lebanon, it caused Eisenhower to focus hard
on intelligence warning issues. Part of the administration's concern was for timely
warning, and that meant timely communications. The Critical Communications
Committee (CCC), which had representatives from various governmental organizations
(including NSA), proposed communications criteria which clearly would require a totally
new system.
The committee defined critical information (they called it "Critic" information, the
first time the term came into use) as that information "indicating a situation or pertaining
to a situation which affects the security or interests of the United States to such an extent
that it may require the immediate attention of the president and other members of the
NSC." The CCC then stipulated that such Critic information should get to the president
within ten minutes of recognition that it meets Critic criteria. 1
It sounded like pie in the sky. No communications system then in existence could
come close to meeting a ten-minute deadline. (Ten hours was more like it.)
When USCIB began looking at various proposals, the system that most closely
resembled what the CCC wanted was the COMINT Comnet, which was still a mythic
concept. Negotiations between NSA and the services had broken down, and the Air Force
had even de-funded a previously agreed-to plan to open the first relay station at
Chicksands. 2 The second Robertson Committee (see p. 259) strongly supported the
establishment of the Comnet as a high-priority requirement, but noted that the CCC was
already working in that direction anyway. 3
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In July 1958, the JCS approved a plan for a new Criticomm system. It involved
establishing a network of automated relays worldwide, building on the rudimentary
COMINT circuitry that NSA and the services had put together. The pattern the JCS used
was the fledgling COMINT Comnet, and the expertise came from NSA. The new program
was promulgated by the DCI as DCID 1/8, "Handling of Critical Communications." 4
The DCID jumped the gun a little; Eisenhower had not yet been briefed. In August of
1968 General Samford, who had been in the traces for two years, and Louis Tordella, who
had been NSA's deputy director for only a few days, were summoned to the White House to
brief the NSC on the proposal. Tordella, who did the briefing, sold the program by
stressing that at least 90 percent of the expected Critics would come from COMINT and that
the COMINT Comnet proposal would enfold fully 200 out of the 245 potential entry points
for critical information. The draft directive, NSCID 7, was already written and ready to
go. All they needed was Ike's go-ahead. After Tordella had finished talking, the president
turned to Donald Quarles, his deputy secretary of defense, and asked, "Don, can we do it?"
Quarles said, "Yes, I think we can." "Let's do it," was all the president said, and it was
done. 5
President Eisenhower
His concern about strategic warning led to the creation of Criticomm and the Critic program.
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The new NSCID made the secretary of defense the executive agent, and it decreed that
the system would consist of the existing COMINT communications system augmented and
modified as necessary. The DCI would establish Critic criteria. NSA was not mentioned,
but it was hardly necessary. The JCS had already named NSA to manage the system. It
was to be completed by 1961. 6
No one was really sure how NSA would magically produce a system that could meet
the ten-minute timeliness goal. COMINT communications at the time were a lash-up of
NSA and service communications. Communication centers werje basically "torn-tape"
relays, and there was no hope of getting anything to the White House in that sort of time
frame. NSA had been working on an automated switching device for several years, but
had not yet come up with a switch that was acceptable to all parties. In this atmosphere
someone would have to improvise.
NSA's communicators, headed by Arthur Enderlin, Max Davidson, and
began tinkering with off-the-shelf commercial hardware that would permit a Critic to
steam through the system untouched by human hands. A key element in their search was
the shunt box, a device invented by Teletype Corporation that could recognize a unique
combination of letters (for instance, ZZZ) and open up circuitry all the way to Washington.
Nothing else would flow in that path until the "express train" had passed through. 7
Back in Washington, NSA had created a system of direct communications, called
ZICON, with its Washington-level customers. This communications group was expanded to
include all organizations on distributions for the initial Critic. This included, in the early
days, the White House and members of USIB (less FBI and AEC). Later, SAC (Strategic
Air Command), ADC (Air Defense Command), TAC (Tactical Air Command), and
STRICOM (Strike Command) were added and still later, the other Unified and Specified
Commands. 8
The advent of the KW-26 cryptoequipment was critical to the functioning of the new
system. With it, the system speeded up to 100 words per minute, and messages zipped
through at almost twice the previous speed.
Criticomm needed relay centers, and in 1959 NSA directed that the Army operate
centers in Europe, Eritrea, the Philippines, Okinawa, and Japan. The Navy would do the
job in Hawaii, while the Air Force would take on the same responsibilities in England,
Turkey, and Alaska. NSA would operate the central hub at Fort Meade. At the same time
the TCOM organization, which had so recently been subordinated to Prod, was once again
made independent, in recognition of its new standing. 9
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Through these and other hasty improvements to the system, NSA was able to report a
dramatic improvement in handling time. In the early days of the program, Critics
averaged one and one-half hours to reach the White House. Two years later, the time had
been reduced to a mean elapsed time of ten minutes. Criticomm was still operated with
jury-rigged equipment, but already the timeliness goal of having all Critics to the White
House in ten minutes was within sight. 10
The Baker Panel
In 1957, two high-level committees
were taking independent and
simultaneous looks at NSA. Both were
to have a long-range impact on
American cryptology.
The Baker Panel was appointed by
President Eisenhower to recommend to
him whether or not there was a
L
J Chaired by
7
William O. Baker, vice-president for
research at Bell Laboratories, the
committee quickly strayed from its
intended charter. Baker wanted to
look at everything, and his
examination became the most
intensive look at the cryptologic
process ever performed by an outside
organization. 11
William O. Baker
When Baker delivered his report to Eisenhower in February 1958, he began by
answering the question directly put to him by the president:
No national strategy should be based on the hope or expectation that we will )
| | ;-...... Even with the greatest optimism, it is clear that no. substantial
(b) (1)
(b) (3) -50 USC 403
(b) (3)-18 USC T98
(b) (3J-P.L. 86-36
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But this, said Baker, was not the whole story. Cryptology was a tremendously
valuable asset to the nation, one which was producing most of the fast and reliable
intelligence then available. It was doing it,
py putting together all the iisciplines^
^ ^ ^ ^TKe
cryptologic system was capable of squeezing out of the ether a veritable cornucopia of
information, if it were properly managed and funded. And this, said Baker, was the focus
of his recommendations.
In order to pr operly employ the cryptologic syst em, NSA needed to focus on the
important things. | | had monopolized the talents of too
L
many smart people. They should be spread throughout the organization,/
This
meant, in many cases, realloc ating resources to ALLO and AC OM or to different divisions
What they had learned working!
could, now be employed against othej
NSA should forget about, developing a general-purpose computer and go for more
RAMs. Baker was not impressed with Project LIGHTNING; he wanted smaller but more
costieffective efforts. ,
The Agency was receiving stupendous volumes of intercepted material, a product of
the rapid expansion of overseas collection sites. Computers should be employed in
processing this take, so that analysts could be free from manually logging
Machines should also be employed at collection sites to reduce the pile of material that had
to be forwarded. This, to Baker, was the next great field of computer applications at NSA. W
Echoing the recommendations of the Hoover Commission, Baker felt that pure
cryptanaly tie research should be removed outside NSA, to a Los Alamos-style institute.
This would isolate pure research from a production organization and reduce the
temptation to employ the best minds in the day-to-day tasks of getting out the news. 15
(t>) (i)
(b) (3)-50 USC 403
(b! (3)-18 USC 79B
(b) (3)-P.L. 66-36
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As for the cryptologic system in general, it should be further centralized under INSA.
Only by centralization could anyone integrate all the pieces of the puzzle and move the
organizations involved in the same direction. Baker took dead aim at the AFSS processing
center in San Antonio (AFSCC), which he singled out as an unwarranted duplicative
processing facility. In fact, the entire collection and processing system should be
overhauled under NSA's direction. Some field processing should be transferred to NSA,
and the Agency should direct the services to close down redundant collection. NSA should
centralize theater processing centers under its own jurisdiction. Better communications
and machine processing systems could speed the flow of intercepted materials thrdugh
those centers, and information would be distributed more quickly to customers. Moneys
saved from the rationalization of the entire process could be applied to other parts of jthe
system. 18 j
Certain specific field operations should be improved under NSA leadership. For
instance, analog signals should be converted to digital form for processing; the technology
was already available. NSA should develop improved intercept and recording equipment
and make them standard throughout the cryptologic system. Punched paper tape, used
universally throughout the system, should be phased out in favor of magnetic tape. 17
Finally, the two related disciplines of COMINT and ELINT should be combined under
NSA direction. This was the ultimate rationalization of the system and was, according ito
Baker, long overdue. This generated controversy even at the White House. Deputy
Secretary of Defense Donald Quarles said that ELINT had only recently been centralized
under the Air Force, and he appealed for time to make it work. But Quarles was losing; it
was the clear consensus of the meeting with Eisenhower that ELINT would ultimately be
placed under NSA. 18 I
Baker's recommendation regarding a Los Alamos-style research institute melt
substantial skepticism. Some (like CIA) felt that it wasn't necessary. Edward Lansdale 1 ,
deputy assistant to the secretary of defense for special operations, pointed out that success
on high-level systems often stemmed from working medium-grade codes from the same
country. Physically and organizationally separating cryptanalysts working those systems,
from those working high-grade systems would be technically unsound. Moreover, NSA!
would likely face severe morale problems if part of its mission were to migrate to a!
separate research institute led by higher-paid private consultants.
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But the proposal that generated the most heat (although not the most/light) was the
BLINT proposal. The Air Force and Navy adamantly opposed it; CtA was standoffish. Even
the director of NSA did not want the job unless he got with it a substantial grant of
authority. The Navy called the treatment of ELINT "superficial"; the report buffered "from
a lack of balance." USCIB was not surt what to do, and it played for time by establishing i .
task force to study the issue. 20
The Reuben Robertson Report \
.V / /
The second look at NSA stemmed from budgetary pressures. Eisenhower had for years
been in a running battle with the Democrat-coiitrolled Congress/over the defense budget,
and in 1957 Secretary of Defense Charles Wilsoft was looking for excess money anywhere
he could find it. It occurred to him that he might find it in NSA's budget, and in January of
1957 he directed Deputy Secretary of Defense Reuben/Robertson (a different Robertson
than the H. P. Robertson, who had chaired a committee in 1953; see p. 227) to establish an
ad hoc committee to look at the CQfeJT and COMSE& budget s. He told Robertson that his
objective would be to hold cryptology undei a Iper year. Robertson chose to
chair the committee himself, and on it he placed a\ number of under secretaries and
assistant secretaries. It was very high-powered indeed;? 1
Robertson zeroed in oti the
bottom, line but couldn't find it. The
cryptologic budgeting process, spread across the Defense Department, was a mess. He
finally concluded that wjiat the department really spent bn cryptology was closer
]and he determined to try to hold that bottom line. But he found even that goal
to!"
iat"
hard to reach. The reason was that cryptology was havin g an unexpectedly high pa yoff.
came
Robertson found that much of what the United States knew
from COMINT. He tried to effect economies, but it was unrealistic to attempt any rigid focus
on! U
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When the committee first began, it took a very close look at collection; This, it figure^,
was wh ere most duplication occ urred. It . recommended that ..total collection sites
be
reduced | The economies thus effected would result in/ a ndi
increase in total numbers of positions; the new positions would be financed/by the station
closures. This would scuttle plans for a continued major expansion of collection resources
but would not really diminish the size of the system. 2 ?
What the committee came to understand, in.the end, ytes that apparent duplication ofi
targets and positions was usually not actual duplica tion. I / / |j|
/ / Only / { cases were being copied phi
more than 1 position, and in most cases. there was\ sound rationale for the duplication!;!
What had appeared so simple at Wilson's level did not jook at all siinple up close.f | i
Instead, the committee worked on station consolidations
Navy, and Air Force stations
similar situation
and
Virtually collocated Army I
should be combined; with AFSS hosting. j a|
[should be resolved in the same v fray, with the ArMy as hojstli
with the Navy as host!
They noted with approval Air Force plans to close U
and centralize the resources!
[They especially lik ed
collection real estate and recommended that the AFSS site at
But most of these consolidations were already in the planning stages ■
gave them a shove.
as
be enlarged/ 5
Robertson simply
The lasting contribution of the Robertson committee was in the budgetary mechanism
itself. Robertson was a big advocate of centralization, and he wanted increased NSA
control over the process. But he was frustrated by the difficulty of determining what the
actual cryptologic dollar figure was. He dealt with cryptologic budgets from all tbiee
services, as well as NSA (and to a lesser extent CIA). He believed that^his should alljbe
rationalized somehow. So he recommended that all cryptologic budgeting be centralized
under DIRNSA. It would be called the Consolidated Cryptologic Program (CCP). 26 The
recommendation was acted on almost immediately, and fiscal year 1959 w^s set for jthe
implementation target date. 27
The Marriage of eunt and NSA j _ '
When a matter gets to the Oval Office, it can no longer be ignored. The inarriage
(some say an unhappy marriage) of NSA and ELI NT began at last, following I the
recommendations of Baker to President Eisenhower. This forced a reluctant and disunited
USCIB to further consider what it had already considered many times. USCIB appointed
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the CIA representative. So as to
direction the decision was to go, Louis Tordella of NSA was
a special study group under
leave no doubt about which
made the deputy chairman.
Overriding strenuous objections by the Air Force, ] fr pted for a consolidated
ELINT system under NSA. His report to USCIB in June of 1958 recommended that the
NSC "appoint the secretary of defense as the oxecutive agent of the government for ELINT
and assign the Director, National Security Agency, the authority and responsibility for
providing an effective, unified organization to control and direct the ELINT intercept,
processing, and reporting activities of the United States Government." A new directive,
NSCID 6, would replaceNSCID 9 and would encompass both COMINT and ELINT. 28
NSCID 6 appeared to give NSA the cryptologic authorities it had been asking for.
When the secretary of defense published the DoD implementing directives for COMINT and
ELINT, however, they came out very differently. The COMINT directive gave DIRNSA
operational and technical control of all U.S. COMINT operations except for a very restricted
list of SlGlNT-related operations not directly related to intelligence gathering (such as
search and rescue and various electronic warfare operations). The ELINT directive,
however, reserved this right to the secretary of defense himself. Only he had the authority
to "determine the ELINT activities which are essential to provide support to commanders
who plan and conduct military operations, and which must be directly assigned by the
secretary of defense to provide an integral ELINT capability "
The services interpreted this to mean almost any type of ELINT collection or processing
operation. General Samford told his immediate boss, General Erskine, that he assumed
that the only ELINT collection that he actually controlled now was that being done by the
SGAs. His assumption was correct. 29
At first NSA did not know quite how to organize the new mission. The key issue
revolved around the competing desires to combine ELINT and COMINT on the one hand and
to maintain a separate identity for the new discipline on the other. But ELINT arrived with
old baggage - the central processing center, NTPC - and so the forces advocating a
separate identity won a partial victory. After some indecision, it was decided to graft it
onto an existing organization, and ELINT first landed in the Office of Collection within
PROD. The name of the office was changed to COSA (Collection and Signals Analysis). It
was a temporary way station oh the way to its own home, W Group, established in 1968. 30
NTPC thus became the first clearly identifiable ELINT asset at NSA. When NSCID 6
was promulgated, it was decided to transfer the entire resources of the organ izatio n - the
people, the equipment, the files - to NSA. T his amo unted to something ove r| | people,
split rather evenly among the 3 services and | | and the equipment for third-echelon
processing. 31
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Along with elint came signal search. CIA and NSA had competed for the mission of
spectrum search and signal cataloguing since 1953, but in the long run the CIA effort was
unsupportable. The basic CIA SIGINT effort was too small to give it an adequate technical
base for the search mission, and, anyway, it was as clearly a cryptologic mission as could
well be imagined. NSCID 6 was the last straw, and in the summer of 1959 CIA gave up its
effort. COSA, which under its previous incarnations had always had a signal search
organization, lost a competitor (without, in this case, picking up assets). 32
Telemetry was another new arrival. Telemetry had always been handled as elint.
The services, heavily reinforced by private contractors like HRB-Singer, General Electric,
Jet Propulsion Laboratories, and Lockheed, all had telemetry collection and analysis
efforts. Beyond that, CIA had an effort of its own, emphasizing (as did its ELINT mission)
the cutting edge of technology. Third-echelon telemetry analysis had been concentrated at
NTPC, but contractors still performed the major share of fine-grain analysis. 38
There was considerable discussion over the nature of telemetry. Was it really COMINT,
as NSA contended, or really ELINT? Melville Boucher, an NSA telemetry analyst, once
said that "telemetry has always been a gray area surrounded by fuzz seen through a thick
mist." The answer would determine how telemetry reports would be handled - spread far
and wide as straight-secret ELINT reports or bottled up by COMINT codewords. In the
summer of 1959, coincident with the transfer of ELINT assets to NSA, the ELINT committee
of USIB (renamed from USCIB by the publication of NSCID 6) decided, rather predictably,
that telemetry was really ELINT and that it would go forth without hampering codewords.
But that did not change its resubordination. The telemetry mission migrated to NSA
where it eventually became TELINT and later FISINT. 84
Since NSA had no telemetry analysts, it would need help. ASA came First, agreeing to
transfer its telemetry assets, including its contracts with JPL and HRB-Singer, to NSA.
NSA established its first telemetry analysis effort under Joseph Burke, who became
known as the father of NSA telemetry.
The transition from Air Force to NSA telemetry was more difficult. The Air Force
retained a residual telemetry effort and resisted turning over its telemetry mission to NSA
for months. In the end they did so only through the considerable persuasive powers of
General Samford. 35
Once NSA took over telemetry, it found out just how chaotic the situation was. Each
organization involved had its own equipment and used its own set of collection and
processing standards. Telemetry tapes arrived at NSA in a hodgepodge of formats, and at
first it was difficult to simply collect information on the formats involved. 36 To bring order
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to the chaos, Louis Tordella, in the spring of 1960. crea ted
' it became a clearinghouse for
technical information, and it marked NSA's first big initiative in consolidating the effort. 37
NSCID 6 did not solve the problems that had plagued ELINT. Within two years, the
President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) was already complaining that
NSA had been given too meagre a grant of power. 38 It did eventually result in
standardized technical rules and procedures, and in that sense the EUNT experiment of
1958 became a success. In the area of command and control, however, it was a dismal
failure.
The Kirkpatrick Committee
The tireless process of reviewing intelligence functions continued to the end of the
Eisenhower administration. The last player in the game was the Kirkpatrick Committee.
Chaired by Lyman Kirkpatrick of CIA, its purpose was to assess all defense intelligence
programs, including SIG1NT (a term that came into the language after NSCID 6 was inked).
Kirkpatrick, like the CIA whence
he came, was distressed at the
uncoordinated and duplicative nature
of defense intelligence. Centralization
was the only way to rationalize the
system, and in SIGINT that meant more
power to NSA. ELINT was out of control
(an old refrain), and the decentralizing
tendencies of the Unified and Specified
Commands had to thwarted.
Moreover, comint and elint had not
been fused, as Baker had envisioned.
This was due in some degree to
classification differences and the
tendency of COMINT people to shield
their information from many of the
people who really needed it. 39
Lyman Kirkpatrick
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Two of Kirkpatrick's recommendations would have a long-range inipact on
intelligence. First, he recommended that an "intelligence community sjtaff be
established, responsive to the DCI. Second, and much more specifically germatU to the
SIGINT world, he called for a broader use of COMINT. The committee viewed the SSd system
as having devolved into an obstructionist group that held information too closely and kept
key players out of the inner circle. According to Kirkpatrick, the SSO system should "be
staffed by personnel of rank commensurate with a courier function" and "avoid placing
their own interpretation on material transmitted by the Special Security Officer Sysjtem."
If true, the charges indicted a system which had been quite dynamic during World War
II. The Kirkpatrick report marked the beginning of the end of that era of dynamism. He
offered no prescription for the problem of interpreting SIGINT. 40 But the very ne*t year
NSA came up with the solution with the creation of a fledgling Cryptologic Support broup
(CSG) system. I
NSA Centralizes the Field System
Cryptologic centralization was having a profound effect on the field system. SonU of
this proceeded from the new authorities that NSA was gaining and from the new
responsibilities that it was undertaking. I
Much of it, however, emanated from a different source. In 1958 Eisenhower iiad
succeeded in getting a sweeping Defense Reorganization Act through Congress. It took jfche
JCS out of the direct chain of command and made them advisors and planners. Within the
command structure, it created the Unified and Specified Commands. This marked a sea
change in the way America did its fighting. Henceforth, wars would always be fought with
combined commands, with component service forces integrated under a single military
boss, the commander of the relevant unified command. 41 i
Overseas, this reorganization demanded major changes in the way cryptology was
organized. Now it was more important to render cryptologic support to the unified
commander. The SCA theater headquarters, representing as they did only the cryptologiq
assets of a single service, were incapable of doing it. Only the NSA field organization
could. |
The first theater to change was Europe. NSAEUR, which had been established in;
Frankfurt, had exercised only a technical support role within the cryptologic community.!
But as early as 1955, an experience d NSAEUR analyst was sent to join the CINCEUR staff !
at Camp des Loges, outside Paris.
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In that year, NSAEUR, over the strenuous objections of ASAEUR, gave its small staff
at Camp des Loges augmented authority to represent the cryptologic community to
CINCEUR. The new functions involved theater-wide planning and representation, and
they marked the first time that the field offices had strayed far beyond technical functions.
NSAEUR continued to augment the staff in Paris and in 1963 moved its office there,
leaving behind in Frankfurt the technical support staff to deal with internal cryptologic
issues. Included in the 1963 move was a new organization, NSA Europe Intelligence
Support Section (NSAEUR/ISS), an element that had been set up to interpret SIGINT
product. It was the first Cryptologic Support Group (CSG.) 43
AFSS and the Development of Second-Echelon Reporting
A parallel development produced profound changes in theater reporting. Ultimately,
it was to lead to the revolution in SIGINT reporting which res ulted in the creation of th e
National SIGINT Operations Center ( NSOC). It started with the
AFSS understood at its birth that airplanes move faster than almost anything and
that to conduct a COMINT support function for the Air Force, it would have to create an
extremely rapid reporting system. At first this led to negotiations with Canine over field
would
site reporting authorities. But AFSS had bigger plans. Keeping track
involve networking all its theater collection sites, and this would require the creation of a
The plans for this were on the
theater-level center.
drawing board even before the demise of AFSA. 4 *
NSA and AFSS went back arid forth during the early 1950s over what organization
should handle this responsibility and where itshould be located. By 1955, however, they
had resolved their differences.
The
as it was called, would have
considerable power. It would "direct the intercept and analysis of foreign
cott imunicatibns" and would "exercise rou tine operational control . . . of all COMINT, ELINT,
and matters. . . ." It would collect traffic forwarded
from field sites under its control and would forward raw and semiprocessed traffic back to
the States. It also had its own independent reporting authority. 46
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This was not unique. ASAEU R exercised similar responsibilities at its processing
differed by the way that it evolved. A key figure in the
center
evolution
on ofl
was a young Air Force captain named Benjamin Ardisana.
4
. j., r- > f
Benjamin Ardisana shown as a lieutenant, with his wife Betty, in the early 1950s
Ardisana had'begun his service career in the Army Signal Corps during World War II.
He had entered the .cryptologic business in 1952, and after a series of assignments with
AFSS units in the Fat East, where he had shown an exceptional talent for innovation and
initiative, he arrived ir n July 1958. 47
Less than a, year later (May 1959), Ardisana s et up the first Eur opean field Opscomm
circuit, between
to coordinate the
between the two organizations. (Some claim that this was the first upscomm in the/
community; the strength of that claim rests on the date that SMAC first set one up, a date
which is less well documented.) At the same time, Ardisana established an around-the-
clock surveillance and warning center to watch the
reported from subordinate sites. 48
as it was being
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All this emanated from four massive stone buildings left over from World War II. "The
reporting operation was on the fourth floor of one of them, under the very eaves of the
building, in a room filled with up to twenty-six Opscomm machines (Teletype Mod 19s and
The Struggle for Control in the Pacific
The Pacific theater was very different from Europe, and it developed in a very different
way. Unimaginably huge and far-flung, it was made to order for fragmentation. In World
War II it suffered from two different and competing commands employing different lines of
attack - MacArthur in the southwest and Nimitz in Hawaii. Supporting each was a
separate and unique cryptologic system. When, in 1945, the two commanders went into
garrison, their cryptologic organizations followed them.
In Japan, MacArthur's cryptologists centered on Tokyo. NSA Far East (NSAFE), the
cryptologic flagship in the Pacific, eventually came to be located on Pershing Heights in
downtown Tokyo. ASAPAC and 6920th SG, the ASA and AFSS senior representatives in
theater, were also posted to the Tokyo environs. Among them they controlled most of the
Army and Air Force cryptologic assets in the theater.
Supporting Nimitz was NSAPAC. But the offices in Hawaii were just that - offices
without dynamic functions. NSAFE had garnered alLNSA's technical expertise in the
theater. This was an accident of history, which resulted from the collapse of the Civop
program in the mid-1950s. The program had been roundly disliked by the SCAs, but it did
provide highly skilled civilian talent that they found most useful. Thus an organization
which became known as PACEXFAC (Pacific Experimental Facility) developed as part of
the NSAFE staff in Tokyo, and it absorbed most of the billets. Like NSAEUR Office
Germany in Frankfurt, PACEXFAC was the cryptologic troubleshooter for the Pacific. It
reinforced the real utility of the Tokyo office. 52
In 1957, Samford decided to rename the offices, but he kept the pecking order the
same. NSAFE was renamed NSAPAC, but the office in Hawaii was called NSAPAC
(Rear), as if it were a skiff being towed by a battleship. It was a name that grated. 53
This was how NSA was organized in the Pacific when the Unified and Specified
Commands were created in 1958. Under the new scheme, CINCPAC in Hawaii was
clearly the senior commander in the theater. When Samford's immediate superior,
General Erskine, came through on a trip the following year, however, he was surprised to
see that NSA had not changed to conform to the realities of the new military command
structure. NSAPAC (Rear) was still in Hawaii, and its chief was the deputy to NSAPAC
28s) all clattering away together.
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in Tokyo. He returned to Washington coiriplaining that NSA had it all wrong in the
Pacific. 54
This unusual organizational scheme bumped along until a hew director, Admiral
Frost, toured the Pacific in the spring of 1962. Frost talked it over with the current
CINCPAC, Admiral Harry Felt. When he returned to'-NSA, he decreed that NSAPAC
would henceforth be located in Hawaii to support CINCPAf
Samford Joins the Agency
The Canine era came to an end on
23 November 1956. His replacement
was Lieutenant General John A.
"Sammy" Samford. As mellow as
Canine was forthright, Samford came
to NSA to smooth ruffled feathers and
give the Agency some room to breathe.
Canine's five years (including one year
as director of AFSA) had been a hectic
time.
Samford was actually better
prepared for the job than Canine had
been. He came to NSA from the
Pentagon, where he had been chief of
Air Force intelligence, and served a
grooming period of six months as
Canine's vice-director. When he
became DIRNSA, he already knew the
players.
John Samford, second director of NSA
His style was fluid - Samford was as smooth as silk. A CIA official described him as
"more of a pedant than a pilot, more of a philosopher than a fighter, ... a man who
understood and loved the SIGINT business." 58 He set out to calm the waters between CIA
and NSA, and when he left the job in I960, the two organizations were back on speaking
terms. His relations with USAFSS, contentious under Canine, settled back down.
Samford had developed a close personal relationship with Gordon Blake, who became
commander of USAFSS in 1957, based on old-school ties established when they had both
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been cadets at West Point. They both knew that the independence of AFSCC would have
to end, but with as little bloodshed as possible.
In order to enshrine the new era of good feelings, Samford initiated a novel experiment
in 1958, in which the chief of the Soviet Navy shop (GENS-2), a Navy captain, would
actually work for the director of naval security, while continuing to respond to DIRNSA on
operational matters. The next year he extended this unique arrangement to the Air Force
and Army, resubordinating the chiefs of GENS-1 and GENS-3 to their parent SCA
commanders. The idea was to give each SCA a stake in NSA, but it did not last long.
Seeing that it had failed to sublimate service factionalism (and even in some cases making
it worse), Frost scuttled the system in 1962. 57
Samford also moved quickly to resolve a long-standing dispute between Canine and
Deputy Secretary of Defense Reuben Robertson. The 1956 McKinsey Study recommended
that NSA be run more on private business principles. To instill a sense of corporate
management, the director should appoint a civilian deputy from the business community.
But Canine, having called in the McKinsey group, rejected the recommendation. Instead,
he continued with his system of elevating one of his service deputies to a position called the
vice-directorship, and he continued to act as his own de facto deputy. The dispute between
Canine, who opted strongly for military management, and Robertson, who demanded a
business approach, grew acrimonious and soured Canine's last months in office.
Samford found, on being elevated to the directorship, that Robertson already had
someone in mind. That someone was Joseph H. Ream, a top CBS executive. So, only some
two months into office, Samford named Ream to the new job of deputy director, just to give
the idea a whirl.
It soon whirled into oblivion. Ream had no SIGINT background, and the learning curve
was too steep. He had serious family problems that required extended trips to Florida and
that cut into his learning time. His lack of technical qualifications for the job simply could
not overcome his well-documented managerial skills. Further, he found it hard to deal
with an entrenched bureaucracy that viewed him as an outsider. Ream quit in frustration
only six months into the job. It was the last time anyone successfully imposed a
nongovernment outsider on NSA's top-level management structure. 58
In his place, Samford hired Howard Engstrom. Engstrom's impact on cryptology had
already been considerable. He was brought into the Navy from the Yale math department
during World War II. He quickly became influential in the development of computers for
cryptologic work, and when the war ended, he left the Navy to form Electronic Research
Associates (ERA), where he was the guiding genius in the effort to develop computers for
NSG, AFSA, and later NSA. In the mid-50s he left Remington Rand (which had
swallowed ERA), where he was a vice-president, to join NSA's R&D organization. When
he arrived at NSA, Samford elevated Engstrom to the position of associate director, which
gave him and his R&D organization special status and was designed to answer DoD-level
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concerns that NSA was not doing enough in research and development. When Ream quit,
Samford moved Engstrom to the post. But he remained only a year, and in August of 1958
NSA experienced yet another change in the revolving door position of deputy director. 59
The TordeUa Era Begins
In late July of 1958, Samford
summoned Louis Tordella, NSA's
influential representative at Office of
Special Operations (0S0), to his office
to talk. Tordella remembers a short
chat about inconsequential matters,
following which Samford asked
Tordella what a deputy director should
be. Tordella told the director that the
deputy should be his "alter ego." That
sounded good to Samford, and he
offered Tordella the job on the spot. It
was the last time any director would
have to do that for sixteen years. The
revolving door shut with a bang behind
the lanky form of Louis Tordella. 60
Like Engstrom, Tordella had been plucked from a college math department for Navy
service in World War II. Originally a Hoosier, he had gone to school in Illinois. OP-20-G's
Laurance Safford found him on the campus of Chicago's Loyola University through his
unique program of recruiting academics with an expressed interest in cryptology. And
also like Engstrom, he was, in 1958, already a cryptologic legend. Tordella had pioneered
in so many areas of Navy cryptology that he was close to being a universal man, like the
Army's Frank Rowlett. He joined NSA when it opened its doors and served in numerous
key positions which permitted him to push his favorite projects, especially the application
of computers to cryptanalysis. Tordella had been NSA's representative on numerous high-
level committees. This, and his tour in the Pentagon, had given him the opportunity to get
acquainted with just about everyone who counted, and when Samford proposed his name to
Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald Quarles (who had replaced Reuben Robertson) in
1958, he got no opposition. 61
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Tordella did indeed become the director's alter ego. Staying through the tenure of
seven directors, he was the details man, the continuity. To many inside and outside the
Agency, Louis Tordella was NSA.
Public Law 86-36
In 1959 Congress passed Public Law (PL) 86-36, which contained provisions
permitting NSA to separate its personnel system from the regular Civil Service system, a
permission which CIA had had since its inception. The problem that NSA had faced was
that it had never been created by statute (only by executive order, the now-famous
Truman Memorandum). There was thus no law which could keep NSA's personnel system
apart from that of the rest of the federal government. Civil Service regulations straight-
jacketed NSA procedures, and classification hampered NSA adherence to procedures
which were intended for a completely open system. To eliminate the dilemma, PL 86-36
exempted NSA from the laws relating to the classification and grading of civilian positions
from disclosing any information regarding the number of employees, the names, titles, or
Job descriptions. Public Law 86-36 was to have a major impact on NSA policies in both the
personnel and security areas. 62
NSA AND THE AMERICAN PUBLIC -THE ISSUE OF LEGALITY
No person not being authorized by the sender shall intercept any communication and divulge or
publish the existence, contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning of such intercepted
communication to any person. . . .
Cryptologic activities, which in the United States began during the early years of
World War I, occupied an uncertain place in government. Early American cryptologists
worked without the knowledge of the American public. They even worked without
knowing if what they were doing was legal or not. It was an odd and unsettling position to
be in.
Early statutes affecting cryptology were devised by Congress to protect radio, a new
invention which required protection. Thus it was that a series of acts, beginning with one
in 1912, was passed to protect information in radio messages from being passed to a third
party to be used for commercial gain. This appeared to have a benign effect on cryptologic
activities in the Army and Navy until 1927, when a revised statute stated that "no person
not being authorized by the sender shall intercept any message and divulge or publish the
contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning of such intercepted message to any person.
..." The aim of the legislation was the same as that of earlier statutes - to protect the
information "unless legally required to do so by a court of competent jurisdiction or other
Federal Communications Act of 1934
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competent authority. . . ." Other competent authority could be the president or someone in
the Army or Navy chain of command. But as the word "intercept" had crept into the
statute, for the cryptologists who secretly plied their trade, this was unnerving news. It
implied that what they were doing might be illegal. Further, it had the effect of shutting
off liaison with the telegraph cable companies, who had in the early years supplied most of
the material that the Army worked on. (But by the late 1920s the Army, like the Navy
before it, was beginning to set up its own intercept stations.) 63
Meanwhile, the American public was blissfully unaware of any cryptologic activity at
all - unaware, that is, until the publication of Yardle/s The American Black Chamber in
1931. Worse, Yardley was hard at work on a sequel, to be called "Japanese Diplomatic
Secrets." It was never published - it became, in fact, the first publication ever suppressed
in the United States on the grounds of national security. To prevent any other revelations,
Congress in 1933 hurried through a bill that prohibited all government employees from
revealing their knowledge of American codes "or any matter which was obtained while in
the process of transmission between any foreign government and its diplomatic mission in
the United States." The penalty would be a $10,000 fine or ten years imprisonment,
considered to be a heavy enough hammer in those days. This appeared to be a backhanded
way of authorizing other black chambers. If such activity were illegal, then why protect
its activities from disclosure? 6 *
This step forward was followed immediately by disappointment. When the Federal
Communications Act was passed the following year, it contained the same clause
regarding "intercept." There was a good deal of discussion about this within SIS and OP-
20-G. Legal minds pointed out that the statute prohibited intercept "and divulging" of
such communications. If it had said "or divulging," it would clearly have singled out the
process of intercept as illegal. But the intercept activity would not be illegal unless it were
accompanied by "divulging," which, once again, referred to use of the information for
commercial gain. And the so-called Yardley Act the year before seemed to imply legality.
But there was a lingering suspicion that they might someday be prosecuted for what they
were doing on the basis of Section 605 of the Federal Communications Act of 1934. The
penalties were exactly the same as they were under the Yardley Act. 65
Following the 1945 Pearl Harbor hearings, which amounted to the second public
revelation of cryptologic activities, there were loud demands for legislation protecting this
vital activity. Within the Army and Navy themselves, lawyers drafted protective
statutes, and the Truman administration moved toward the introduction of legislation.
Finally, in 1949 a draft was ready, and it was steered through the Senate by Lyndon
Baines Johnson, a young senator from Texas. In 1950 the bill became law: Title 18,
U.S.C.798. 66
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The United States already had legislation. But the Espionage Act of 1917 required
proof that the person revealing the secret information intended to injure the United
States. The courts had required a high standard of proof, including the direct involvement
of agents of a wartime enemy, in order to secure a conviction. What if no enemy agents
were involved? Or what if the agents were from a "friendly" country? Or what if the
person simply gave the information to a reporter who published it?
Title 18 took care of all that. It made it a crime to divulge information relating to
various aspects of cryptologic activities to an unauthorized person "or uses in any manner
prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign
government " It cast a very broad net, was almost totally inclusive, and was legally
enforceable even in the absence of intent to injure. It could thus deter, or be used against,
well-meaning but misguided idealists. 67
Just as important, it implicitly authorized COMINT activities by acknowledging that
they were going on and by protecting their secrecy by law. Here was an implicit voiding of
Section 605 of the Federal Communications Act of 1934 and earlier statutes as they
related to cryptology.
This was followed two years later by the Truman Memorandum creating NSA and
describing its responsibilities. Here was the "lawful authority," even though classified, so
needed in the years prior to the war. As the years rolled on and Congress appropriated
money for NSA's activities, the legal status of the business became less and less debatable.
The 1959 anonymity statute (Public Law 86-36) for the first time named NSA in
legislation. Finally, in 1968 the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act specifically
overruled Section 605 of the Federal Communications Act of 1934. Cryptology had made
the journey from a secret black chamber to an officially authorized and avowed
government activity. 68
PUBLIC REVELATIONS AND CRYPTOLOGIC SECRECY
[It is] of the essence of a secret service that it must be secret, and if you once began disclosure, it is
perfectly obvious that there is no longer any secret service and that you must do without it
Following Yardley, COMINT went underground. The Black Chamber had already been
destroyed by Secretary of War Stimson in 1929 (through the device of pulling State
Department funding). Its successor, Friedman's SIS, was so small (he started with a staff
of six) as to be effectively invisible. The Navy had an effort of comparable size, and the
entire enterprise proceeded reasonably secure from the eyes of the public.
Austen Chamberlain, British foreign secretary in the 1 920s
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Beginning in 1939, a series of magazine and newspaper articles trumpeted the success
of the federal government in breaking up German espionage rings. Some of the articles
referenced German codes and discussed U.S. intercept activities. SIS and OP-20-G
officials were livid - someone was calling attention to COMINT activities in such a way that
the Germans could be alerted and might take countermeasures.
The "someone" turned out to be the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). FCC
revelations to the press, designed to boost its stock with the public, were at least partly
responsible for the War Department's securing Roosevelt's order in 1942 directing that
such activities be discontinued in all but the Army, Navy, and FBI. Despite the order, the
FCC continued its radio monitoring and codebreaking activities throughout the war and
even accompanied this with leaks to the press boasting of its COMINT effectiveness. 89
Potentially more damaging was an article in the Chicago Tribune immediately after
the Battle of Midway alleging that the U.S. had had advance knowledge of Japanese plans.
The article was bylined by Stanley Johnston, a reporter who had been with the Pacific
Fleet during the battle of Coral Sea. The next month columnist and broadcaster Walter
Winchell stated that this knowledge had come from the breaking of Japanese naval codes.
The Navy demanded that Johnson be indicted, and the case went to a federal grand jury in
Chicago in August. No indictment resulted, a blessing for an over-eager Navy legal
department that would have had to reveal far more damaging information in court to
secure a conviction. The glare of national publicity was mercifully diverted, but in
August, far ahead of schedule, the Japanese Navy changed all its codes. (There was never
any direct evidence, however, that the Japanese read the Tribune or changed their codes
in response.) 70
Classifying Cryptologic Information
Service cryptologists were almost instinctively aware of the extreme sensitivity of
their work. They began in such small organizations, though, that the process itself was
easy to protect. Once they developed information that needed to go to someone, they
generally distributed it on a by-name basis to those few Army, Navy, and State
Department people who had an absolute need to know. Information was often taken in
locked containers, and a courier stood by while the official involved read and initialed the
paper.
As for a formal classification, they had to use what was available. Existing service
regulations at the beginning of World War II contained only two classifications: Secret
and Confidential. Another quasi-classification, called Restricted (an earlier version of For
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Official Use Only, or FOUO), was reserved primarily for information relating to military
hardware. 71
Their British allies had three classifications. Above Secret they added the term Most.
Secret. In 1944 the Army adopted the British three-tiered system, but callek the highest
category "Top" Secret. COMINT, being among the most sensitive items on tiie menu, was
classified Top Secret. 72
When the Army obtained an agreement with GCCS in 1943, the Americans had to
agree to attach a security caveat associated with COMINT. The most sensitive information
(which at the time included ENIGMA and MAGIC decrypts) was now handled under a special
codeword called ULTRA. Information derived from traffic analysis, DF,fand plain text
received codeword protection, but different codewords were used to/ denote lesser
sensitivity - thumb and PEARL were two which appeared during World Wiar II. After the
war the system devolved into two codeword categories: Top Secret /Codeword, and
everything else. That which related to COMINT but was not derivdd directly from
communications intercepts began to receive the stamp Handle Via COMINT Channels Only
(HVCCO). /
Within cryptology, there were certain projects that received miich more limited
distributions. BOURBON, the early Soviet problem, was a good example, and VENONA got
even more limited handling still. This system of ad hoc compartmentatfons continued into
the early 1960s, when it was augmented by a more formal compartmentation system
which was applied to SIGINT product reports. The most sensitive cat egory was Gamma,
I " ~ || A lesser category,
called Delta, was often used to protect
Despite the strict secrecy applied to the trade, the number of people indoctrinated for
COMINT rose steadily as its utility came to be recognized. By 1955 the number of COMINT
clearances within the federal government (and to contractors) had grown to over 31,000,
and the Hoover Commission expressed concern about the spread of highly sensitive
information to such a large group. Of thes a| . , ~| This was
a far cry from the six people that Friedman hired to carry on the Army's COMINT business
in 1929 or the two people (Laurance Safford and Agnes Driscoll) who began Navy COMINT
in the 1920s. 73
Pulling on the other end of the rope were the people who advocated an even broader
dissemination, of COMINT. In 1960 Lyman Kirkpatrick (who headed the Kirkpatrick
Committee - see p. 263) took the Defense Department to task for over-strict rules
regarding intelligence. (And by intelligence, he was clearly referring to COMINT.)
Kirkpatrick wrote:
(b) (1)
(b) (3J-P.L. 86-36
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Entirely apart from the well-known tendency throughout the intelligence community to over-
classify, the special handling required for a very significant portion of intelligence information
has at times deprived key personnel of information vital to the successful discharge of their
responsibilities. 74
The tug of war between the advocates of secrecy and dissemination was never-ending.
Nor could the conflict be resolved. As sigint became more successful, it became an
inevitable victim of its own success. Utility meant dissemination, and dissemination
meant risk.
BREACHES IN THE DIKE - THE SECURITY CASES
The first significant breaches of the security system came from within rather than
from without. The first two were quiet, and while they both involved significant
compromise, their very obscurity minimized the damage. Neither became a cause celfebre,
although one of them became public. The third, however, did major damage primarily
because it became a public case.
L' Affaire Weisband
The first case did the most real damage. But it was so successfully hushed that only a
few insiders knew that it had occurred. It involved an AFSA analyst named William
Weisband.
Weisband was an immigrant. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1908, he had entered the
United States in either 1925 or 1929. (The record on this point is obscure.) He became a
citizen in 1938 and, while living in New York City, was inducted into the Army.
Weisband went into the Signal Corps, and he first began working with ASA in 1943,
where he became a favorite of Colonel Harold Hayes (who headed the Army's cryptologic
activities in the Mediterranean). As an accomplished linguist, he was an ASA natural and
received a transfer from North Africa to Arlington Hall in 1944. The end of the war found
him still working there, and he hired on as a civilian. ASA needed all the help it could get
in 1945, and getting a linguist like Weisband was a good day's work. 75
Unfortunately for ASA, Weisband was a Communist and suspected of being a spy. He
had handled other agents passing defense information to the Soviets even before he
entered the Army. He apparently gave up handling agents once he entered the service,
but after he arrived at Arlington Hall he probably resumed his old avocation.
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At the Hall he had a reputation as a stroller. He wandered around, chatting and
picking up bits of gossip. He was also adept at getting himself on distribution for
documents that did not directly concern the work of his section. Highly gregarious,
Weisband had a wide circle of friends, and he entertained some of the top officers and
civilians in ASA. His postwar wedding party was talked about as a who's who of Army
cryptology. 76
Although Weisband had been on an FBI list of suspected Communists since 1948, he
was first tagged as a possible spy through the VENONA project. In 1949 a Soviet agent
identified in VENONA traffic led the FBI to another agent, who led them to another, who
finally implicated Weisband as a "handler." The FBI began piecing together information
on this new identity and was aghast to learn in 1950 that Weisband was employed at
Arlington Hall, the very place whence the venona decrypts were coming. In April 1950
Wesley Reynolds of the FBI went to Carter Clarke, commanding general of ASA, to report
the news. Clarke told Reynolds that Weisband had transferred to AFSA. They went to
Admiral Stone.
At the time, Weisband was working as a section chief on the Soviet problem. Co-
workers had already reported him as a possible security risk, and he had been removed
from access to some of the more sensitive projects while security looked into it. He was
immediately suspended and interrogated. He denied everything. But the walls were
falling in on him even as he spoke. In August, as the subject of an unrelated investigation,
he appeared before a federal grand jury in Los Angeles investigating West Coast
Communism. Ordered to return for further testimony, he did not comply, was arrested
and was convicted of contempt, for which he served a year in a federal prison.
He never returned to AFSA, and in 1951 he was mustered out of federal employment
by a loyalty-security board in San Fransisco, which, not surprisingly, found that removal
from federal employment was in the best interest of national security. 77 He remained in
the Washington area, working as a car dealer and apartment manager, and died in 1967 in
Fairfax. He never admitted anything.
The FBI never found out what, if anything, Weisband passed to the Soviets. But his
close involvement with the Soviet problem argued suggested some of the tightening up of
Soviet communications was a result of Weisband's activities. Many AFSA employees
believed, rightly or wrongly, that he was single-handedly responsible for "Black Friday."
His case instilled a certain paranoia within the profession, and accounted to some degree
for NSA's extremely close guarding of comint.
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The Petersen Case
JOMeCRETU^RA
(b) (6),
Joseph Sydney Petersen, Jr.
The second security breach
involved an NSA analyst named
Joseph Sydney Petersen, Jr. Petersen
had served with ASA in the South
Pacific in World War II and had formed
a close liaison with Dutch cryptologists
with whom the United States was
exchanging information. After the war
this liaison came to an end, but
Petersen decided on his own to become
a one-man Third Party office to the
Dutch intelligence service. He
collected documents at his home and
periodically passed them on to Dutch
intelligence people from the embassy.
This apparently went on for several
years.
Petersen's espionage might never have come to light had it not been for an unrelated
naval security case involving an officer wh o had been separa ted from the service for
He implicated Petersen as a j | an d an investigation was
launched. But when NSA learned that Petersen had close friends at the Dutch embassy,
the investigators forgot about the| | charge and called in the FBI. In
September 1953 the FBI began questioning Petersen, and he began revealing his story. A
search of his apartment uncovered a large number of classified documents, and the FBI
reckoned that it had enough to prosecute. 78
The joint NSA-FBI team consulted with Canine in his quarters. The options were to
try to prosecute or to be satisfied with a simple resignation on his part. This would be the
first, prosecution under Title 18, and a hearing in open court might bring to light
information that would be more damaging than just giving Petersen his walking papers.
But Canine decided to go for prosecution, and he later overrode objections by USCIB that
the resulting publicity would seriously damage NSA.
When Petersen's lawyer found out that the government had opted for prosecution, he
began negotiating a plea bargain. On the day the trial was to begin, he told the judge that
Petersen was pleading guilty to a violation of Title 18. Petersen fully cooperated with the
FBI and in return was sentenced to seven years in prison. He was paroled after four years.
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The Petersen case was similar to that of a much more notorious case years later, the
espionage of Jonathan Jay Pollard. He passed cryptologic documents to an ally who he felt
had been left in the lurch. Along with technical informati on regarding the establishment
of cryptanalysis courses, Petersen also informed the Dutchj
J When the FBI searched his house, they found cryptologic!
documents dealing with several COMINT targets, among them Korea and Communist!
China. The NSA damage assessment found that the number of documents passed to the
Dutch was "very large." 79
When Petersen was indicted, the Associated Press ran a dispatch which was printed ir
many newspapers across the country. It was the first time the new agency had ever fallen
under the klieglights. The dispatch described NSA as "essentially a radio monitoring
service. It has a network of radio receiving stations and other equipment, some of which
are based overseas. It listens in on the world's radio traffic, both conventional messages
and coded material . . . secrecy even tighter than that shrouding the Central Intelligence
Agency surrounds the National Security. Agency. It is not listed by name either in thje
Washington directory or in the Pentagon phone directory." 80 i
|
A number of other details about NSA appeared to bring about a focus on the AgencyJ's
anonymity. NSA's obscurity had been so perfect that Richard Russell, the chairman of tie
Senate Armed Services Committee, once asked, "What does the NSA do?" 81 The j6b
description appearing in the U.S. Government Organization Manual was a marvel jof
obfuscation: "The National Security Agency performs highly specialized technical and <jo-
ordinating functions related to the national security." The Petersen case was the firstfto
pry open the lid of anonymity.
Martin and Mitchell
WO
On 1 August 1960, a small story appeared in the local Washington newspapers.
Department of Defense employees of the National Security Agency had failed to return
from vacation and were still missing.
The story did not stay small very long. NSA's reputation for secrecy guaranteed tjiat
any news would be big news, and by the next day it was on the front page. On 5 Augustithe
Department of Defense issued a brief statement that it was now known that the jtwo
employees, Bernon F. Mitchell and William Martin, had flown to Mexico City and thence
to Cuba. It was assumed that they were behind the Iron Curtain. 82 [
(b) (1)
(b) (3J-P.L. 86-36
(b) (3) -50 USC 403
(b) (3)-18 USC 798
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Martin and Mitchell during their press conference in Moscow
(from theiVeio York Mirror)
But the most shattering blow came on 7 September. Listeners to Radio Moscow tuned
in on one of the most remarkable press conferences of the century. Now in Moscow, Martin
and Mitchell were introduced by the Soviet announcer and proceeded to tell their story in
exquisite detail. They related how they had become analysts at NSA, full of confidence in
the integrity of their government. They described how the U.S. government was
intercepting and breaking communications of its allies (Turkey was named specifically),
about intentional violations of Soviet airspace to collect intelligence, about alleged
American plans for a nuclear first strike, and how NSA was trying to exploit Soviet
communications. They exposed NSA's organization (PROD does this and ADVA does that,
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etc.). They described the arrangements between NSA, GCHQ, and Canada. They spent a
good deal of time on the RC-130 shootdown.in 1958. . It was marvelous theater for
Khrushchev, who had launched a diplomatic and press offensive against the United States
in May following the U-2 shootdown. 8 ?
Martin and Mitchell
were .voiing mafchpmatfrianc Both had gone into NSG and had
been assigned together a.\-_ [ Mitchell, who was from California originally,
was quite bright and had been something of a prodigy in high school. But he was
extremely immature socially and had a great deal of difficulty adjusting. While he was at
{Martin was his only close friend. Martin was from Columbus, Georgia. He, too,
had been labeled as very bright and, compared with Mitchell, was more gregarious.
Certain questions about their psychological health came up on the polygraph and
background investigation but were not regarded as serious impediments to employment.
Once out of the Navy, both pursued college degrees in mathematics, and upon graduation
both were approached for employment by NSA. They entered on duty as GS-7s in 1957. 8 *
In 1959 Martin was sent to the University of Illinois for graduate study. While there
he established Communist associations, and in his private conversations became more and
more critical of the U.S. government. (He expressed special distaste for the U-2 overflights
and other reconnaissance activities, and this was reflected in the statements of both men
to the press in Moscow.)
At the time, Mitchell was having his own problems and finally sought psychiatric
advice. The private psychiatrist concluded that Mitchell was in all probability a
homosexual with serious personality disorders. But the psychiatrist felt that this sexual
orientation was not the root of his problems. More serious was his poor relationship with
his own family. 85
It has been alleged that in 1959, in violation of standing rules for government
employees, Martin and Mitchell visited Cuba. Despite this, there was no evidence that
they actually established an espionage relationship with any Communist country prior to
the defection.
In June of 1960, just after Martin returned from Illinois, they both applied for annual
leave. They stated that they were going to visit family on the West Coast. Instead, they
departed for Mexico City and from there flew to Cuba. Apparently they proceeded from
there via Soviet trawler to the Soviet Union.
Back at the office, no one thought to question their absence until they were a week
overdue. When their supervisor failed to reach them either in their Laurel apartments or
at their families' homes, the FBI was called in, and there began an intensive investigation.
The security people concluded that the defections were impulsive and self-initiated. 86
There was no evidence that they carried off any documents, which argued for the
theory that they made their decision after going on leave. Still, the route they took
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required considerable planning, and they left a defection note in a safe deposit box in a
Laurel bank, to which they referred during the Radio Moscow broadcast. So the whole
idea had been evidently a long time abuilding. 87
The defection precipitated a storm of criticism of NSA. The secretary of defense
initiated an investigation of NSA security practices. Not to be outdone, the House Un-
American Activities Committee, chaired by Representative Francis E. Walter of
Pennsylvania, launched its own investigation. Finally, President Eisenhower directed
that the FBI initiate an investigation to determine if there were any more potential
Martins and Mitchells in the ranks at NSA. 88
All three investigations lambasted the current practice at NSA of granting interim
security clearances upon successful completion of the polygraph. Canine had authorized
this procedure as an emergency measure during the Korean War, and it had come into
routine use. After Martin and Mitchell the practice was terminated, and every employee
had to have a complete background check in addition to the polygraph before performing
any sort of classified work at NSA. 89
The Walter Committee investigation was exhaustive. It spanned thirteen months,
took two thousand man-hours, covered fifteen states, and resulted in sixteen separate
hearings. Thirty-four present or former NSA employees testified in closed session. NSA
and the Department of Defense began by opposing committee access to NSA records, but
eventually a compromise was worked out, and NSA and the committee finished on
reasonably good terms. Still, the Agency could not keep the process from being
sensationalized, and it was stung by a charge by Walter that NSA was a "nest of sexual
deviates." 90
The legislative result of the Martin and Mitchell affair was a law which set up the
legislative authority for NSA's security system. Among other things, it established that
employment at NSA was appropriate only when it was "clearly consistent with the
national security." It required a full field investigation prior to employment (i.e., no
interim clearances) and gave the secretary of defense additional authority to fire NSA
employees "when such action is deemed necessary in the interest of the United
States. . . ." 91
In addition, the committee made certain recommendations concerning NSA's
administrative practices - for instance, making professional psychological and psychiatric
services available in assessing applicants and employees who revealed instability. But
almost all the committee's recommendations had already been implemented, and in its
final report the committee gave NSA credit for this. The most far-reaching of the changes
related to the termination of the procedure of granting routine interim clearances, and the
institution of the so-called three-hour rule, which required that employees three hours
overdue for work would be reported to the security office. These and a long list of other
changes became a permanent part of NSA's way of doing business. 92
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As the Walter Committee proceeded, the FBI investigation was winding down. An
intensive screening of on-board employees had turned up a small number of people whose
sexual conduct, in light of the sexual mores of the time, might be questioned, and of these
some twenty-six had been terminated. The proceedings were not all that a civil
libertarian might have wanted, but they calmed the waters long enough for NSA to begin
functioning again. 9 * 4
The damage to NSA's public image was so severe that it overshadowed the cryptologic
damage that had been done. Because it appeared that the two defectors had not carried
away documents and that they had not had a previous relationship with the Soviets, just
what the Soviets did know as a result was speculative. Martin and Mitchell had known
about the Soviet problem, but they were in a position to give away
on certain Soviet cipher systems, especially a system called
information
_pjBA employees blamed Martin and Mitchell. But no one ever had
proof. And unlike Weisbahd, their defection was no*t coincident with any sort of "Black
Friday." This, the most famous (or infamous), of NSA's security cases, was not the most j
damaging.
Notes
1 . Max Davidson, "The Criticoram System," Cryptologic Spectrum, Spring 1975,1 1-1 4.
2. "NSA's Telecommunications Problems, 1952-1968," CCH Series X.H.4. ., I
3. "Report of the Secretary's Ad Hoc committee on COMINT/COMSEC (the RoberJsdrtReport), June 1958, in
CCH Series VI.C.1.11. \ XX N f
4. "NSA's Telecommunications Problems " j
5. "NSA's Telecommunications Problems . . . Tordella oral interview; Eisenhower Library papers inGQH Series
XVI. ""\. I
6. NSCID7.
7. Tordella interview.
(b) (1)
(b) (3J-P.1. 86-36
(b) (3)-50 USC 403
(b) (3) -IB USC 798
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8. Davidson. \ j
! ! i
9. "NSA's Telecommunications problems:. . . "
tZ3
108.
10. Eisenhower Library papers, "Report, of the Joint Study Group on Foreign Intelligence Activities," 15
December 1960, in CCH Series VI.C j. 42. s
11. "The Baker Panel Report and Assoeialjed Correspondence," in CCH Series Vl.X.1.9.
12. Ibid.; Eisenhower Library papers.
13. Baker Panel Report, ACC 1666?, CBR5" 51.
14. Baker Panel; Eisenhower Library.
16. Baker Panel; Eisenhower Library.
16. Baker Panel. i
17. NSA/CSS Archives, ACC 166^7, CBRF 51.
18. Eisenhower Library papers. 1 \
19. Eisenhower Library papers; Davjd Kahn, The Codebreakere: The Story of Secret Writing (New York:
MacMillan, 1967), 677; HistoryjoflDA/CRD by Richard Leibler, in CCH Series VI.A.1.6.2.
20. Baker Panel. Ill
21. Howe, draft history of the Robertsjm report, in CCH Series VI.C.1.12.
22. Robertson report. j
23. Ibid. |
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid. I
26. Ibid. !
27. Memo for Mr
Subject: Oversight; of the National Security Agency by the Department of Defense, 9
Nov 1967, in CCHberies Vl.C.1.27.
28. "History of the Electronic Intelligence Coordinating Group, 1955-1958," in CCH Series VI.O.1.6.; Collins, V.
Ill, 12.; Tordella interview.
29. CCH Series VI.O.1.3.; VI.B.2.6.
study, 16-17; interview with Dr. Robert Hermann, NSA OH 45-94, 2 Sept
30. CCH Series Vl.O.1.3.1
1994, Charles Baker and Tom Johnson
31. CCH Series VI.O.1.3.; VI.O.1.2.
32. NSA/CSS Archives, ACC 39471 , H03-0311-4
33. CCH Series VI.O.1.3.; NSA/CSS Archives, ACC 39471, HO3-031 1-4.
34. Melville J. Boucher, "Talomatry [sic] and How it Grew," Part I, Spectrum, Fall 1971, 13; CCH Series
VI.0.1 .3 .; ACC 39471 , H03-0311-4.
tudy, 16-26.
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35. NSA/CSS Archives, ACC 39741, H03-0311-4;
Program, 1945-1972: An Historical Overview," manuscript in CCH.
36. NSA/CSS Archives, ACC 39741, H03-031 1-4.
37. CCH Series VI.O.1.13.
38. Eisenhower Library papers.
39. "Report ofthe Joint Study Group on Foreign Intelligence Activities," [T^e Kirkpatrick Report], 15 Dec. 1960
in CCH Series VI.C.1. 32. /
40. Ibid. //
41. NSA/CSS Archives, ACC 261 15, CBNE 48.
42. Informal correspondence between Gary Winch and Mel Boucher, 1977.
43. CCHSeriesVI.1.1.9.
44. Bob Rush, "AFSCC Tasking: The Development of the Three-Echelon Reporting Concept, 1949-1952 "
USAFSS history available at AIA, Kelly AFB, Te^as:
45. "History of the USAF Security Service; Fiscal Year 1955," AIA, Kelly AFB, Teias.
46. Ibid.
47. Official USAF biography, Oct 1977, /
48. Historica l nntn Rpnnrf fnr th e 6>6lst SCG, Semi-Annual, 1956-1964, available at AIA, Kelly AFB; Oral
interview with; |25March 1993, by Tom Johnson and Jim pierson, NSA OH 15-93.
50. Ibid.
51 . Ellerson oral history; 6901 SCG Semi-Annual histories.
■A Look at the Pacific Experimental Facility," Sperfruro, Winter 1874, 18-21.
52.
53. Howe, "Narrative History..., "Part V, Ch. XXVI-XXX. (b)(1)
/ (b) (3J-P.L. 86-36
54. Howe, "Narrative History." (b) (3) -50 use 403
/ (b) (3) -18 (JSC 798
55. CCH Series VI.HH.12.10.
56. Collins, V. Ill, 40-41.
57. Transcript of videotapes of five former directors ^ j itudy, 16; CCH Series VI.NN.1.1.
58. Ibid.; Tordella interview.
59. CCH Series VI.D.1.1.; Stone interview; Kahn, The Codebreakers, 705.
60. Tordella interview.
61. Tordella biography in CCH Series VI.D.3.4; Tordella interview.
62. Summary of Statutes Which Relate Specifically to NSA and the Cryptologic Activities of the Government,
available in CCH.
63. Ibid.
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64. Ibid.
65. Ibid.
66. Ibid.
67. Ibid.
68. Church Committee Hearings, V. 5, 7-8, ACC 25958-25959, HO-02-0405.
69. John V. Connorton (LTJG) and Floyd W. Tompkins (LT), "The Need for New Legislation Against
Unauthorized Disclosures of Communication Intelligence Activities," June 1944, SRH 016.
70. Ibid.
71. CCH Series V.C.2.8.
72. Ibid.
73. Hoover Commission report.
74. Kirkpatricfc Committee report.
75. Benson and Phillips, V. 1, 155.
76. Ibid., VI, 158.
77. Ibid., V. I.
78. Dr. Theodore W. Bauer, "Historical Study: The Security Program of APSA and NSA, 1949-1962,"
unpublished manuscript available in CCH.
79. Bauer; Kahn, The Codebreakera, 690-92.
80. NSACSS Archives, ACC 2146, CBOI 37.
81. Quoted fm Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA (New York- Knoof
1979), 276.
82. Wayne Barker, The Anatomy of Two Traitors: The Defection ofBernon F. Mitchell and William H. Martin
(Laguna Hills, California: Aegean Park Press, 1981).
83. Press statement; copy available in ACC 27147, CBOI 37.
84. NSA/CSS Archives, ACC 24399, Gl 1-0502.
85. Ibid.
86. Bauer.
87. Barker, CCH Series X.H.5.
88. Bauer; Eisenhower Library papers.
89. Bauer.
90. ACC 45399, Gl 1-0502.
91. "Summary of Statutes . . ."; NSA/CSS Archives, ACC 24399, Gll-0502.
92. Ibid.
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94. Ibid.
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